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 court in Kazakhstan on Oct. 8 sentenced an outspoken political activist to seven-and-a-half years in jail for allegedly colluding with a fugitive billionaire to overthrow the government. Specifically, Judge Berdybek Myrzabekov found Vladimir Kozlov, head of the unofficial Alga! party, guilty of inciting dissent among striking oil workers in what became a series of violent clashes between police and workers that left 15 people dead last December. The judge declared that Kozlov had turned a labor dispute into a politicized strike on orders from billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov, a rival of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Koslov, however, has consistently denied the charges and proclaimed that his case was an attempt by the President to quell civil protests within the country.

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.

Tajikistan sealed its border with Afghanistan this week, after clashes with armed rebels left 48 dead. Security forces are now searching for Tolib Ayombekov, a former rebel who became a commander of the border guard after a 1997 peace deal and is now believed to have taken up arms again. Ayombekov has been a fugitive since he refused to show up for questioning about the July 21 murder of a local security official in southern Badakhshan province, or to turn over men under his command suspected in the slaying. A conflict over control of the cross-border traffic in Afghan opium is said to be behind the fighting. (IWPR, July 31; DPA, July 30; Registan, July 27; AP, July 25)

Newly announced plans by China's central government for the "resettlement" of the last remaining nomads over the next five years have sparked protests in Inner Mongolia, with traditional Mongol herders accusing authorities of the illegal expropriation of grazing lands for development projects. At least four protests by Mongol herders have been reported over the last month. The most recent protest took place on July 2 in Imin Sum (Yimin Sumu in Chinese; "Sum" is equivalent to township), Eweenkh Banner (Ewen Keqi in Chinese; "banner" is equivalent to county), Hailar district. According to an appeal letter to the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) written by the Imin Sum protesters, local herders have lost large tracts of their grazing lands to government projects including highway and rail line construction, mining and power plants. The process began in 1984 when Chinese state-run company Hua Neng Coal Electricity developed up a coal mine on local grazing lands.

Chinese state media say 17, including 12 children, were wounded in an explosion at an "illegal" Islamic school in Hotan, a city in restive Xinjiang province June 6. Official sources say staff at the school set off explosives when police came to "rescue" children who were being held at the school, after receiving complaints from parents. Dilxat Raxit of the German-based World Uyghur Congress, however, said the children were hurt when police used tear gas in the raid. (AP, China Daily, June 6)

Two young Tibetan men set fire to themselves May 27 outside one of Tibet's holiest shrines, the Jokhang Temple—marking the first self-immolations in Lhasa, Tibet's historic capital, where security has been tight since a March 2008 protest wave. Chinese state media reported that one of the young men died, while another is still alive. The two men, who self-immolated together, worked at a restaurant in Lhasa. One was said to be from Ngaba (Chinese: Aba) in Sichuan province, where most of the self-immolations have taken place, and the other from Labrang (Chinese: Xiahe) in the part of Gansu province known to Tibetans as Amdo. The self-immolations took place during Saga Dawa, an important religious period for Tibetans that commemorates the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death. The official media reported that Lhasa's Public Security Bureau has set up a special task force to investigate the case. (International Campaign for Tibet, May 28)

An elderly man set himself on fire as a protest in Kyrgyzstan's southern city of Osh on April 15, and died of his injuries later in a hospital. The incident is being portrayed as a "protest against protests"; he apparently left a note calling on the Central Asian republic's citizens "to stop constant protest actions" and respect the country's leadership. The city is near the border with Uzbekistan, and has seen ongoing rival demonstrations since a wave of deadly clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in 2010. Kyrgyzstan's government has been trying to remove acting mayor Melis Myrzakmatov since the clashes, fearing his Kyrgyz ethno-natoinalist politics are fueling unsrest. His followers have repeatedly rallied in his support, with ethnic Uzbeks holding counter-demonstrations. According to official data, over 3,000 protests took place in the country in 2011; a major mobilization was held in the south this March, with Myrzakmatov's supporters demanding the government's resignation. (RFE.RL, RIA-Novosti, April 16; The Telegraph, March 29; International Crisis Group, March 29)