Tibetan denies official version of cousin’s death by self-burning

Soon after Sangay Gyatso lit himself on fire and burned to death in one of China’s ethnic Tibetan areas, police came knocking on his family’s door with questions – and seemingly the answers as well.

Was the fiery suicide of the 27-year-old farmer pre-arranged? Didn’t he have connections to foreign-based separatists? Didn’t the family get a 3 million yuan (US$500,000) reward for the self-burning protest?

A cousin of Sangay Gyatso said his family was asked these questions before the government cast the father of two as an incorrigible thief and womaniser who was goaded into setting himself on fire in an elaborate and cruel scheme to fan up ethnic hatred. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation.

“It was all nonsense,” the cousin, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, said during an interview conducted in his room at a Gannan prefecture community in the rolling hills along the incline toward the Tibetan Plateau. He sat near a stove used for both cooking and heat. A portrait of the Dalai Lama hung from a moulding near a window.

In a rare interview conducted in this ethnic Tibetan region, the cousin said the man burned himself October 6, last year, at a white stupa near his Gannan village, in a personal protest over the lack of rights for Tibetans. He said Sangay Gyatso was not connected to Tibetan groups abroad.

“There are a lot of lies around Sangay Gyatso and around the people who have self-immolated,” he said.

Since early 2009, overseas Tibetan rights groups have reported that more than 120 Tibetans – monks and lay people, men and women, and young and elderly – have set themselves on fire. Most died. The groups say the self-immolations are homegrown protests over China’s heavy-handed rule in the Himalayan regions.