Tibet on Fire

Tibet on Fire:Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule

by Tsering Woeser

Translated by Kevin Carrico

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    128 pages / January 2016 / 9781784781538

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    January 2016 / 9781784781552

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Why Tibetan monks are setting themselves on fire

Since the 2008 uprising, nearly one-hundred and fifty Tibetan monks have self-immolated in protest of the Chinese occupation of their lands. Most have died from their wounds. “If Tibetans saw even a sliver of an opportunity to hold demonstrations, then they would not resort to self-immolation,” Woeser, the dissident Tibetan poet, has written in the New York Times. The Tibetans she references includes herself: a prominent voice of the Tibetan movement, and one of the few Tibetan authors to write in Chinese, Woeser has been placed under house arrest and lives under close surveillance. Tibet On Fire is her account of the oppression Tibetans face, and the ideals driving both the self-immolators and other Tibetans like herself. Angry and clear, Tibet On Fire is a clarion call for the world to take action.

Reviews

  • Tibet on Fire is a deeply moving and humanizing book by an intrepid women with one foot in both Tibetan and Chinese societies. Woeser takes us behind the headlines and helps us better understand why so many Tibetan people have chosen to end their lives in this horrific form of protest. In a country where there are fewer and fewer critical voices, Tsering Woeser stands out for her courageous and pointed criticism of China’s current ethnic policies.

    James Leibold, author of Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable?

  • This book is as thoroughly documented as possible. Tibet on Fire may be a concise volume, but it conveys rare voices that would otherwise be hushed.

    Spectrum Culture

  • Readers of Tsering Woeser’s essays and reportage know well how anguished she has been at the acts of self-immolation that have taken place in Tibet and Tibetan communities since 2009. An internationally renowned Tibetan poet and writer, Woeser is one of the most well-informed and trenchant commentators on Tibet today, and with this volume she presents readers with a unique and well-reasoned analysis and account of the phenomenon of self-immolation in Tibet, its precipitating causes and its significance. This is a most important book about a most urgent subject: the ongoing consequences of continued Chinese repression in Tibet.

    Elliot Sperling, Associate Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at the University of Indiana, and author of The China-Tibet Conflict: History and Polemics