Thousands of Tibetans have burned rare animal pelts and skins in response to a call by the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader, to give up products from endangered animals, Tibetan exiles said on Friday.
But the move has raised the ire of the Chinese authorities, who have arrested nine people for "colluding with the Dalai Lama," an Indian animal rights group said. The Chinese government reportedly banned the burnings last week.
"An estimated 6 hundred million yuan [US$75 million] worth of animal skins have been burnt in the eastern Tibet alone," said Lobsang Choephal, a 35-year-old monk who smuggled video footage of the burnings out of Tibet.
The footage, shown to the press on Friday in Dharmsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile, shows thousands of Tibetans gathered in the Kirti Monastery in Amdo region in Eastern Tibet throwing traditional Tibetan dresses lined with animal fur into a giant bonfire.
The wearing of coats trimmed with fur from tigers, leopards, otters and other rare animals recently became stylish in Tibet, prompting warnings from environmental groups of the damage to such endangered species' wild populations.
Organizers planned to bring the anti-skins campaign to a climax with a mass burning at a monastery today, but authorities issued a ban shortly before it was to take place, according to TibetInfoNet, a group based in Germany.
The burning at the Kirti monastery took place on Feb. 11, Choephal said. It was unclear whether the event took place after the practice was banned.
The Dalai Lama, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, fled Tibet amid an aborted uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and is routinely accused by Beijing of being a religious charlatan and separatist bent on gaining independence for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said that he doesn't want independence for Tibet -- only more autonomy.
On Friday, a group of 37 Nobel laureates relased a joint letter released an open letter to China's President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) urging China to grant autonomy to its western Tibetan regions, citing Hong Kong as an example of China's "one country, two systems" approach.
The letter was released by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, based in New York City. It was cosigned by Peace Prize laureates Wiesel, F.W. de Klerk, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, and literature laureates J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka.
Other signatories were winners for chemistry, economics, medicine and physics.
An Indian animal rights group, which helped expose the use of endangered skins in Tibet, said nine people -- two Chinese and seven Tibetans -- were arrested for the burnings.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was