Truth behind blaze: how self-immolations affect Tibetans

As his black cat leans to him, Chirarab sits on a bed with his legs crossed, wondering why his son chose to end his life in a pre-meditated self-immolation.

"He is so foolish. I did not educate my son well," says the 63-year-old Tibetan veterinarian.

His son, 31-year-old Tsekho, did not get along well with his wife prior to his death. He wanted to do business and make money and asked his father for start-up money. However, Chirarab refused and scolded him, as the father worried his alcoholic son would squander the money in excessive gambling and drinking.

After hearing that self-immolating could make him a "hero," Tsekho told his friends, "I rather burn myself than live like this."

He lit himself on fire beside a bridge in his village on Nov. 29, 2012. Two of his fiends fed the fire by pouring gasoline onto a woolen blanket and throwing the blanket to Tsekho. Another two villagers sent photos of his self-immolation overseas, along with his detailed personal information.

Some foreign media later branded Tsekho a "Tibetan martyr" protesting the growing influence of Han Chinese in the Tibetan plateau. They also used his story as an excuse to attract international attention to the so-called "Tibet issue" and the ultimate pursuit of "Tibet independence," a campaign spearheaded by the Tibetan government-in-exile, with the Dalai Lama as its spiritual leader.

Villagers carried Tsekho's corpse to his parents' home and gave Chirarab the grievous news of the death of his only son.

COPY-CAT SUICIDES

Chirarab lives in Luchu County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in northwest China's Gansu Province, located in the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Gannan borders Tibetan-inhabited areas in Qinghai and Sichuan provinces.

Copy-cat self-immolations spread in the border area of Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces last year, mostly involving young people under the age of 30.

Sangdegye, 18, lies in a bed in the Burn Department of the Gansu Provincial Hospital in the provincial capital of Lanzhou after having his leg amputated from the knee down last year.

The young man from Gannan's Xiahe County recalls buying three liters of gasoline and a handful of painkillers at a village store on Dec. 2, 2012.

He drove a borrowed motorcycle toward the nearby Bora Temple. Dressed in his Tibetan robe, he doused himself in gasoline. After the fire broke out, he ran to the temple. But he forgot to take the painkillers he had purchased, and in his immense pain, he took off his fiery clothes and caught the attention of nearby police.

Police investigations show that Sangdegye was introverted and believed in the Dalai Lama clique's saying that self-immolations were a sacrifice for the great Tibetan undertaking. One of his friends set himself alight and died on May 27, 2012, a move that shocked Sangdegye.

Sangdegye used to watch Voice of America (VOA) Tibetan-language programs, and says he adored the self-immolators VOA reported on, as they were like "heroes."

"I was startled when I learned that my son set himself ablaze. Although such things have happened recently, I never thought that it could fall on my family," Tsering Tokyi, Sangdegye's father, says.

His mother Wandetso rests her head on her knees when she talks about her son. She quietly recites Buddhist sutras and rubs her prayer beads, but later the sutras will give way to sobs.

"We don't know how to move on," says Namgyal, Sangdegye's grandfather.

A Tibetan official with the Gannan prefecture government says the Dalai Lama clique often chooses Tibetans facing financial pressures who have received little formal education, young people or those caught in family feuds as the target of inciting self-immolations. Instigators have sometimes told potential self-immolators that the Dalai Lama will "pray for you after your death."

Tibetan Buddhism's traditional belief in the afterlife also plays a role in self-immolations. The monk, who fled Tibet for India after a failed uprising in 1959, once said those who commit self-immolation in this life will be reborn in the afterlife.

"It is sheer destruction of humanity," says the Tibetan official who asked not to be named. "Why did you goad 17- or 18-year-olds to self-immolate? Why didn't you self-immolate?"