This is a very sad and difficult time for my friends in the Seattle Tibetan community, and also for the Tibetan diaspora throughout the world. Tibetans living in Tibet are lighting themselves on fire -- self-immolating -- in desperate demonstrations against Chinese oppression and human rights abuses.
Despite the tightly-controlled news atmosphere in China, reports have leaked out that, this month alone, 25 Tibetans have set themselves on fire. Most of these individuals are said to be in their late teens and early 20s, with the youngest, a nun named Sangay Dolma, just 17 years old. Eighty-seven Tibetans have now self-immolated in the past several months -- this in a land with a Buddhist culture that values, perhaps above all else, what Tibetans refer to as “the gift of precious human life.”
I did photographs (above) this week as my friends gathered in Seattle to offer prayers for their spiritual brothers and sisters in Tibet. And I traveled with them to the Chinese embassy in Vancouver, British Columbia (photos below) where the Tibetans prayed, sang, and raised their voices for human rights and freedom in their homeland.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, announced that any Tibetan who survived a self-immolation would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of Chinese law.
