Dear Friends:
This news is from the NYTimes of today (28 03 2012) -bhuban TTibetan Exiles Rally Around Delhi Self-Immolator March 28, 2012 12:00 am DHARAMSALA, India -- By Tuesday afternoon, posters of the man in flames were plastered along the narrow streets of this town adopted by Tibetan exiles. Monks, merchants and tourists stared. In the early evening, more than 200 people walked through the town center waving Tibetan flags and carrying banners that proclaimed the critically injured man, Jamphel Yeshi, a martyr.By EDWARD WONG / The New York Times The shocking images of Mr. Yeshi's self-immolation in New Delhi on Monday have provided the Tibetan exile movement with a rallying point and an iconic expression of the anger and frustration that Tibetans suffer over Chinese rule. At least 29 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in Tibetan areas of China since March 2011, and many have died. But Chinese security forces have clamped down across the plateau, so only a handful of the self-immolations have been recorded and transmitted, and only in grainy cellphone photographs or video. Mr. Yeshi burned himself in front of hundreds of people, during a protest largely by Tibetans before a visit by President Hu Jintao of China, who was scheduled to fly to New Delhi to attend an economic summit meeting. Mr. Yeshi was taken to a hospital with burns over 98 percent of his body, and word of the self-immolation spread quickly through Dharamsala, a hill station in northern India that is the home of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, and the government-in-exile. On Tuesday, images of Mr. Yeshi proliferated on walls here. One gruesome poster showed his ravaged body in the hospital. A cousin, Sonam Wangyal, visited him and mourned his terrible injuries, The Associated Press reported. But he also said: "We are fighting for freedom. The world should know this." Details about Mr. Yeshi's life emerged. Many initial reports that were largely based on Indian police accounts said his first name was Jampa and gave his age as 26, but Tibetan organizations here said with certainty that he was Jamphel Yeshi, 27. Fellow exiles said he was from the Ganzi area in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham, which now lies in China's Sichuan Province. He left in 2006 and made his way to Dharamsala, where he attended a school that educates refugees in Tibetan history, culture and language. Mr. Yeshi then settled in New Delhi, where he was unemployed and lived with his cousin. "He self-immolated for the cause of Tibet," said Tenzing Namdak, 36, a man in jeans and a tan jacket walking at the back of the march on Tuesday. "All the Tibetans have tried so many ways to get attention, and somebody had to take the lead." _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
