Lobsang Sangay, the newly elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, met May 12 with three Tibetan activists on indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to protest against a Chinese crackdown at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province. The activists are members of the Tibetan Youth Congress, which says the aim of the hunger strike—now in its 18th day—is to press for the immediate withdrawal of Chinese security forces from the monastery and the unconditional release of all Tibetan political prisoners, including those recently arrested in Sichuan's Ngaba county. They are also demanding that a TYC delegation be granted access to Tibet to assess the situation of political prisoners there. Sangay, who is due to take office in August, was a leading member of the TYC during his college years in New Delhi.

The Dalai Lama announced on March 10 that he will step down as political leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India. "As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power," he said in a prepared speech. "Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect." At present, the 14th Dalai Lama has a dual political and spiritual role. He will now retire as political leader, while retaining his function as the head of the Gelup School of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet's spiritual leader. The announcement came on the 52nd anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising.

An ethnic Uighur website editor was sentenced to seven years in prison in China after a secret trial, Amnesty International said March 7. Tursunjan Hezim, a 38-year-old former history teacher, was reportedly detained shortly after the July 2009 protests in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Tursanjan Hezim ran a popular Uighur-language website, Orkhun, which covered local history and culture until it was shut down shortly after the protests. His family was never informed of the charges against him and his whereabouts remain unknown. The government has not publicly stated the grounds for his detention. (Amnesty International, March 7)

The indigenous Evenk people in north Siberia have launched a campaign against Russian energy giant Gazprom's plans for a pipeline through their territory, which they say threatens their traditional hunting and fishing grounds. The planned pipeline, which will link the Yakutia Republic's Chayandinskoye oil and gas field with the Far Eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk, is to be developed near an Evenk settlement.

India's government this week publicly objected to any Chinese firm or consortium being given contracts related to the building of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. About 735 kilometers of the proposed pipeline will pass through Afghanistan and another 800 through Pakistan. The gas sales agreement for the pipeline is slated to be signed this April, and India's stance may complicate matters. The Asian Development Bank has insisted on a role for Chinese firms, since these have "experience in building such long pipelines in a short time."

Forty Tajik soldiers were killed Sept. 19 in an ambush by suspected militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The soldiers were part of a 75-man convoy moving through the Rasht Valley, an area known as a haven for Islamists insurgents. Five officers are reported to have been among the 40 soldiers killed. No insurgents were reported killed. The soldiers were searching for members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who escaped from a prison in Dushanbe on Aug. 25. One guard was killed during the jailbreak.

Four people were detained Aug. 25 for a deadly attack on Chinese military police last week in the far western region of Xinjiang, state media reported. In the Aug. 19 attack, a member of the Uighur minority apparently rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a checkpoint at a highway intersection near the city of Aksu, some 400 miles west of the provincial capital Urumqi and 37 miles from China's border with Kyrgyzstan. Six police were killed and 15 injured in the first major terrorist attack in China since 2008. (Reuters, Aug. 25; CSM, People's Daily, Aug. 19)

In a New York Times op-ed Aug. 26, "China's Discreet Hold on Pakistan's Northern Borderlands," Selig S. Harrison of the Center for International Policy writes that Islamabad has effectively handed over de facto control of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to Beijing. Although the region is largely closed to the outside world, Harrison cites reports indicating a "simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army." He describes the development as "a quiet geopolitical crisis" in the Himalayan borderlands of contested Kashmir.