Self-stabbed Tibet dead scrawled blood protest on wall

(TibetanReview.net, Dec06, 2012)  A Tibetan youth in Tsoe (Chinese: Hezuo) City of Kanlho (Chinese: Ganna) Prefecture, Gansu Province, stabbed himself to death in the second week of Nov 2012 as China held its 18th five-yearly party congress in Beijing to announce its fifth generation Politburo Standing Committee of seven. As he bled, and before he died, the man, 30-year-old Jigme Tseten, wrote a protest note on a wall with his own blood, reported Radio Free Asia (Washington) Dec 4.

‘Tibet is independent, and the Dalai Lama should return to Tibet,’ he was reported to have written on a wall of the Upper Khagya School. Local Chinese officials were reported to have rushed to the wall to erase the man’s dying declaration.

Local officials were reported to have also tried to misrepresent the incident by declaring that the man was drunk when he stabbed himself and died.

News about the incident reached the outside world belatedly because of China’s tight control on information and communication channels, along with restriction on people’s movements, following a series of self-immolations in the area.

Jigme Tseten, a resident of the Chunak nomadic community located half a mile from the Upper Khagya local government centre, is survived by his mother, wife, and two children.