Opinions

Leaving Osaka, Japan’s third largest populated city early in the morning, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, beaming with smile shook hands and bid farewell to his hotel staff, making sure that the attendants outside the gates got his special attention.

Eleven Tibetans have set fire to themselves in eastern Tibet since March. Six have died. The Chinese government describes them as “terrorists in disguise.”

On February 27, 2009, the 24 year-old monk Tapey from Kirti Monastery in Amdo, Ngaba, died from self-immolation; it was perhaps the first time that someone from within the Tibetan region used self-immolation to express his will. I wrote in an article titled

Tibetan Buddhist monk Phuntsok was known among his friends as a shy novice until one afternoon he marched into the street, soaked in kerosene, and set himself ablaze. Police rushed towards him, beat him to the ground with iron rods and doused the flames. By then the 20-year-old had already been consumed by fire.

As the second session of the 15th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile came to a close, the commentaries of political pundits across Tibetan media have started weighing in on how the new Kashag had managed to withstand [the scrutiny of] parliament. When I discussed the same with my friends in the US, Europe and Taiwan,

On 17 October, a 20-year-old nun named Tenzin Wangmo from Mamae Dechen Choekhorling Nunnery in Ngaba in North-eastern Tibet, set herself on fire while shouting ‘Free Tibet!’

In 1946 when the Muslim League declared “Direct Action Day” and some of the most horrendous and large scale Hindu-Muslim violence erupted throughout India, one of the worst hit areas was the Noakhali district of Bengal.

“In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes,” or so said pop culture icon Andy Warhol. But are world events, revolutions, natural disasters also destined to suffer Warhol's 15 minute fate?

Although the revolution in Libya is no longer in the headlines, that country’s attempt to move from dictatorship to democracy holds important lessons for Tibet. One lesson is that political change

In mid-December last year, Mohamed Bouazizi, a humble Tunisian street-vendor of fruits and vegetables, set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his produce and the daily harassment and humiliation inflicted on him by police and local officials.