The anti-Han and anti-Beijing ferment, marked by endless self-immolations of freedom-loving Tibetans—monks and others, young and old, men and women— continues in the Tibetan areas of China.
There have already been 114 self-immolations so far—the majority in the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, where the self-immolations started in 2009 following Chinese suppression of the monks of the Kirti monastery.
The Chinese attempts to intimidate the potential self-immolators by jailing friends and relatives of some self-immolators on charges of abetment of suicide have failed to crush the movement. The more the suppression, the more the self-immolations.
In their desperation, the Chinese projected the movement as orchestrated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his overseas supporters and by the Voice of America. Finding that their allegations had no takers in the international community, they are now trying to blame some Tibetan followers of His Holiness in Dharamsala, India, for allegedly instigating the self-immolations.
On March 18, 2013, the State-owned Xinhua news agency disseminated the following report: