Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The grim spectacle of young monks, nuns and lay people setting themselves on fire to protest conditions in their homeland is a stark reminder of the gloom and despair that now prevails on the Tibetan Plateau. These acts of self-immolation — at least 36 since March last year — have been staged to protest the increasingly heavy controls that China’s government in Beijing has imposed on Buddhist religious practices. At the end of last month, a self-immolation occurred for the first time in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, which may be a powerful portent of new turmoil in Tibet.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) likes to promote that its constitution enshrines freedom of religion, as well as the freedom not to believe in a religion, and bans discrimination on the grounds of religion or lack thereof. The important — but unstated — caveat is that religion must be state-sanctioned.

The PRC also likes to send delegations to international events, including religious gatherings. However, it is often reluctant to play by the rules of such gatherings (as Taiwanese know all too well), a tendency it demonstrated once again this week when 17 Chinese delegates left the South Korean city of Yeosu in a huff because they had not been able to get the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB) to toss out a delegation of Tibetan Buddhists from a biannual gathering.