CHART: 100 Tibetan Self-Immolations
Today marked the 100th act of self-immolation by a Tibetan, as a monk reported to be his 20s doused himself in petrol in a Kathmandu restaurant and set himself alight.
The protests have become a sad recurring feature of Chinese news, and it's become undeniable that Beijing has been rattled by the protests amongst the Tibetan community. The country's official TV network CCTV aired a documentary last week that openly blamed the US for the protests, while there have been reports that dozens of people have been arrested in relation to the self-immolations.
The self-immolation protests first began in 2009, but since 2011 there has been a noticeable uptick in the protests, One white paper published last month by the Tibetan Policy Institute sought to collate the reports since 2011.
We took the available data and turned it into a chart:
This chart gives an idea of the dangerous upswing in the protests – there were 28 protests in November alone, for example.
More than 80 of the protests resulted in the death of the protester. While the majority of protesters are in their late teens and early 20s, the youngest was 15 and the oldest 64 — both died.
While the majority of the protesters are monks, the careers listed by the Tibetan Policy Institute show a variety of different types of protesters, including cooks, farmers and businessmen.
The protesters are attacking what they say is China's repression of their religion and culture. Tibet's leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lamai, has repeatedly called for an end to the protests, but there appears to be no end in sight.
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