Evan Osnos
The New Yorker
January 23, 2013
Beijing woke to snow on Sunday morning. We had family in town, so we made a visit to Tiananmen Square, where I discovered that a new feature had been installed. In the most critical parts of China’s sanctum sanctorum, a bright red fire extinguisher has been positioned every ten or twenty meters, in case someone sets him or herself on fire.
By now, it is a safe bet that someone will—though probably not there—and that he or she will be the one-hundredth Tibetan to do so since a campaign of self-immolations began a year ago. Yesterday, China took another step closer to that milestone when a twenty-three-year-old Tibetan, named Kunchok Kyab, set himself ablaze in Bora township, near Labrang monastery, in Gansu province. The Voice of America reports that he is survived by a wife and ten-month-old child. The burnings are a protest against Chinese rule and for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader.
The installation of fire extinguishers says much about the prognosis for meaningful progress on efforts to address Tibetans’ demands for greater autonomy. In the same spirit, the state media recently reported that monks are being organized into firefighting teams, and “[l]arge rooms outside temple prayer halls are used as fire-control offices.” Chinese police also recently detained seven people accused of “inciting” a Tibetan villager to set himself on fire. The government is offering rewards of up to fifty thousand yuan for information on the planning of future protests.
The one-hundredth burning man will be a bizarre moment and, I’m afraid, not the end of this—not even close.
