A young monk burned himself to death in Luchu (Chinese: Luqu) county of Kanlho (Gannan) prefecture, Gansu province, on March 26—the third Tibetan to torch himself and die in as many days, taking the total reported toll since February 2009 to 114. Konchog Tenzin, 28, torched himself at a major road intersection near his Mori monastery. Local Tibetans quickly moved the scorched remains of the monk’s body to the monastery for prayer services, as Chinese security forces moved in after the incident. Troops have been deployed to the towns near Mori monastery, with restrictions on freedom of movement imposed on the local Tibetans. (Tibetan Review, March 29)

Police in Sechuan's Aba county on Dec. 11 detained two Tibetan men—a monk at the local Kirti monastery and his nephew—on charges of "inciting" self-immolations. Four days earlier, the self-immolation of a 17-year-old girl at Rebkong monastery town in Qinghai brought the total number of such cases to 95. Chinese authorities again accused the Dalai Lama of encouraging the practice. (The Hindu, Dec. 11) The following day, the New York Times ran an op-ed, "Tibet is Burning," by prominent human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who has defended peasants struggling to keep their lands before China's onslaught of "development."  Xu writes about his journey in October to pay respects to the family of Nangdrol, an 18-year-old self-immolation martyr. Paraphrasing the note left by Nangdrol, Xu calls the current situation in Tibet "scarless torture." He writes about his fellow passengers on his ride in a car packed with locals to Nangdrol's hometown of Barma in northeast Tibet:

A Tibetan writer and poet died Oct. 4 after setting himself on fire to protest Chinese policies in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Gudrup, 43, self-immolated in the town of Driru (Chinese: Biru) in TAR's Nagqu (Nagchu) prefecture. He left a note on the popular Chinese social networking site QQ.com, in which he called for Tibetans to "foster unity and solidarity" and not "lose courage" in the struggle for freedom. So far, 53 Tibetans have torched themselves to protest Chinese rule. Gudrup's is the fifth self-immolaiton to be reported in the TAR. The first self-immolation in Lhasa, TAR's capital, was reported earlier this year.