On July 2, Lobga Rangzen, a Tibetan man who had taken the word meaning “independence and freedom” as his name, set himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in New York. His act came one day after China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law took effect. In a video posted before his death, he denounced the law as an erasure of Tibetan identity and called on Tibetans-in-exile to take up their responsibility.
He chose the spot deliberately, too. Tibetans have looked to the U.N. for redress since 1950, when Tibet’s appeal first went to the new global body. The General Assembly passed resolutions on Tibet in 1959, 1961 and 1965.
The 1961 resolution explicitly invoked Tibetans’ right to self-determination. Yet after the People’s Republic took China’s U.N. seat in 1971, the issue vanished from the organization’s agenda. Rangzen’s self-immolation was an indictment of six decades of silence.
For weeks after his death, Tibetan communities across the globe marched and demonstrated. CNN, Radio Free Asia and others covered it; the U.N. secretary-general’s spokesperson offered condolences, and the U.S. State Department reaffirmed its support for Tibetans.
Then, within days, the coverage vanished. No government went beyond boilerplate statements of sympathy.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
