Xinhua Insight: Tibetan self-immolation instigator contrite
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E-mail Xinhua, February 8, 2013
"Once I get out of prison and go back to my hometown, first I will see my mother," said Phagpa, at a detention center in northwest China's Qinghai Province.
"Second, my 90-year-old teacher at the monastery. He was very good to me, but he has problems with his eyes," added the convict, a native of Dowa in Qinghai's Tongren County.
Having now been sentenced to 13 years in jail, the 27-year-old at the center of a spate of Tibetan self-immolations last year will have a long time to wait for that homecoming. But, as an exclusive interview with Xinhua before the court ruling indicates, his experiences so far have already made him contrite about his crimes.
Wearing black cloth shoes and cotton-padded jacket, Phagpa was in good spirits when he spoke in English with a Xinhua reporter.
It's hard to imagine such a talkative, humble and filial young man inciting others to set themselves alight in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in 2012.
Last summer, Phagpa twice met his fellow villager Drolma Je, a Buddhist monk at Dowa Monastery. Phagpa told him of recent self-immolation cases in neighboring Sichuan Province and encouraged him to follow suit.
"If you burn yourself, it will be good for Tibetan independence and the return of the Dalai Lama to the Tibetan regions," Phagpa told him.
Self-immolation was on Drolma Je's mind from that point on.
He prepared a lighter, a bucket of petrol, a butter lamp, Tibetan incense, pesticide and a Dalai Lama portrait and planned to self-immolate at a hotel room in Tongren County on Nov. 18 last year. It was lucky that his rash idea was stopped by an elder cousin.
Phagpa said he attended the funerals of five self-immolators as a member of the illegal Snow Traditional Culture Service Association and each time gave their families 100 yuan (15.9 U.S. dollars) in cash and pictures of the Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangay, the "Kalon Tripa" or "prime minister" of the "Tibetan government-in-exile."
On Nov. 8, when the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China opened in Beijing, Phagpa organized more than 50 primary school students and local herders to gather in front of the Dowa township government, shouting slogans related to "Tibetan independence."
Between his actions last year and his present situation, Phagpa has changed his mind about whether the self-immolators can be classed as "national heroes."
"At that time I thought they were heroes. I thought that if I supported them, I would become a hero myself."
Today, however, Phagpa is relieved that Drolma Je did not succeed in self-immolating.
"If burning was heroic, everyone would burn themselves," he said. "But why those who call self-immolators heroes won't do that themselves?" He added that personally he was not ready to burn himself.
STUDENT IN INDIA
Phagpa first came across self-immolation in India in 2011. His following radicalization came after an earlier life of much travelling.
He was not meant to be a monk.
Born into a poor nomadic family with 10 children, there was not enough money around for him to attend school. So he was instead packed off to a local monastery at the age of seven.
Phagpa stayed in the monastery until 2005, when he heard schools in India were free and he would have a chance to see the Dalai Lama there.
He went to Lhasa in May 2005 after resuming to secular life, paying 3,000 yuan to a trafficker, who sent him to the border with Nepal. Phagpa crossed the mountains together with two peers and arrived in the Nepal reception office of the "Tibetan government-in-exile."
They were transferred to Dharamsala via New Delhi. It was arranged for Phagpa to study at the Birig School run by the "exile government."
Unsatisfied with the tough study life and unpleasant diet, Phagpa became a monk of Ganden Monastery in south India three months later.
One year on, he was again on the move -- to Soggar School, also run by the "exile government." He studied there for three and a half years.
At that time, the eight classes accommodated 700 students, many of whom came from China's Tibetan areas. Phagpa, along with 29 of his classmates, were sent to a school in Delhi to study computing for six months after graduation from the Soggar School.
In Dharamsala, Phagpa was deeply affected by the doctrines of "greater autonomy and Tibetan self-governance" advocated by the "exile government."
Phagpa twice saw Dhondup Lhadar, vice president of the Tibetan Youth Congress based in Dharamsala, and one of the most active advocates of "Tibet Independence."
But "his rank was too high. And mine was low. I was not brave enough to greet him," he remembered.
Pictures of self-immolators from China's Tibetan regions were posted on the streets of Dharamsala, Phagpa also recollected of his time there.
INSTIGATOR
Phagpa returned to China in September 2011, after he learned that his mother was sick.
He continued to keep close contact and exchanged information about Tibetan regions with 18 classmates of Soggar School through QQ and WeChat, the two most popular online chatting tools in China.
He sent a photo of Jinpa, a 23-year-old man who burned himself to death on Nov. 8, 2012 in Tongren, to Kam Tsenpo, a member of the Tibet Youth Congress in India.
Phagpa said many people in Dharamsala told him that China's Tibetan areas and monasteries have neither light nor roads. They also characterized Chinese prisons as very bad. But "now I am a prisoner, and nobody beats me."
The wide, clean roads and tall buildings in Tongren were a huge contrast to the dirty and shabby roads and houses in Dharamsala, he said.
According to the young convict, his mother currently receives 55 yuan every month as a pension from the government.
Phagpa went to Lhasa to study Mandarin in March 2012 for two months and opened a free English training class in his village.
He then became an English teacher for an orphanage in Jainca County. He spread the ideas of "Tibetan independence" to his students, according to the police.
Looking forward to the future, Phagpa wished he could open a drinks shop with his girlfriend in the county seat, selling juice and Tibetan tea. "But I know it will be difficult now."
According to a document jointly released by the Chinese judicial, procuratorate and public security authorities, those who plot or instigate self-immolation will be prosecuted for the crime of intentional homicide.
"I know I made a mistake," Phagpa said. "I want to say sorry to every one.
"If I have a chance to go back to my hometown, I will tell everyone burning is stupid."
The Intermediate People's Court of the Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture convicted Phagpa of intentional homicide and inciting secession after an open trial on Friday morning. He was sentenced to 13 years in jail. Endi
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