Trouble in Tibet

Tenzin Wangmo, a 20-year-old Tibetan nun, woke up to clear skies on October 17th. At around noon, she gathered the things she needed and walked down the valley to the bridge below her nunnery. Once there, she found a suitable spot, perhaps thumbed the prayer beads strung around her neck one final time, and began to shout. “Let His Holiness the Dalai Lama return to Tibet!”, she cried. “We want religious freedom!” Then she set herself on fire. She walked up and down for about eight minutes, a witness says, before collapsing.

Ten days before, two teenage former monks set themselves alight in the same region, Aba county in ethnically Tibetan western China, near where I once taught English. A few days before that, it was a 17-year-old monk. Tenzin Wangmo is the ninth Tibetan to self-immolate since March. It is hard to imagine a more disturbing trend.