A Tibetan activist lit himself on fire and outside of the United Nations headquarters in New York on Thursday to protest China’s control over his homeland, declaring in a video before his self-immolation that Beijing’s policies were “destroying the Tibetan people.” He later died.
Friends of the activist identified him as Lobsang Palden, known as Lobga Rangzen, a 52-year-old resident of Queens. Originally from eastern Tibet, Lobga Rangzen had been an advocate of Tibetan independence for more than a decade.
The police said that around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday they responded to a call for help at East 42nd Street and 1st Avenue, next to the U.N. headquarters, where they found a man with severe burns throughout his body. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Lobga Rangzen appeared to have recorded his self-immolation on a livestream on his own Facebook page, which was verified by a friend of his. In it, he could be seen walking across a street outside of the U.N. building with a large Tibetan flag. Moments after he erected the flag on a street corner, he lit himself on fire. He stepped on to the street as his body was engulfed in flames then collapsed on the ground. (The video was later taken down.)
In another video posted on his Facebook page also on Thursday, Lobga Rangzen called on his compatriots in exile to unite and do more to fight for Tibet’s independence. He hinted that he planned a demonstration that day and said that it was purely for political reasons.
“So if I do a big action today, I want you to know it is not for any personal reason. It is not because I have nothing to eat or nothing to wear, but because I am doing this for my country. For the Tibetan nation,” he said.
The protest took place a day after China implemented a new “ethnic unity” law that requires Mandarin be the main language of instruction in schools and includes other measures aimed at assimilating minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs into China’s mainstream Han Chinese majority.
Since 2009, there have been more than 150 self-immolations of Tibetans in China in protest of Beijing’s hard-line campaign against what it sees as Tibetan separatism. The Communist Party has placed the region of Tibet and neighboring Tibetan areas under close security, tightly controlled its monks and monasteries and emphasized the teaching of Mandarin Chinese over Tibetan.
The self-immolations in China were initially carried out by monks, but nomads, farmers and others also began staging the protest. They were so frequent that in 2012, the top human rights official at the United Nations at the time, Navi Pillay, criticized China for the suppression of Tibetan rights, saying that it had driven them to “desperate forms of protest.” Ms. Pillay appealed to Tibetans to seek other ways of expressing their feelings and urged China to allow them to do so without retribution.
Even as the self-immolations became central to the Tibetan protest movement, some Tibetans were anguished over the deaths of their young men and women and asked how the acts reconciled with Buddhist teachings. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader-in-exile, has described the religious issues surrounding the self-immolations as “very, very complicated.”
Such protests have been rare in the United States, according to Tenzin Dorjee, director of research and advocacy at Tibet Action Institute, who was a friend of Lobga Rangzen’s. He said that Lobga Rangzen’s clarity and calm during his last statement suggested he had been planning this action for a while.
Tenzin Dorjee described his friend as a central member of the Tibetan community in New York, helping with cultural events and participating in countless demonstrations. “He would come to every single protest rally we ever organized,” he said.
“For him, there was no other goal or value in life that was higher than national liberation,” he said. “That was the singular thing that occupied and preoccupied him.”
According to Jamyang Norbu, a Tibetan writer and another friend of Lobga Rangzen’s, the activist was born in the Kham region of Tibet and went into exile in the 1980s. He attended a Tibetan monastery in India before moving to the United States, where he worked in construction and eventually became a cab driver.
Jamyang Norbu said that Lobga Rangzen had a brother in China who had been imprisoned.
On Thursday night, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside of the U.N. building to commemorate Lobga Rangzen, according to Jamyang Norbu, who was at the rally. It was evidence of his friend’s popularity, as someone who frequently helped people with odd jobs.
“He was funny, he was generous,” he said of his friend.
The presence of the demonstrators embodied Lobga Rangzen’s hope that the community would unite, overcoming differences over how to deal with Beijing. Some Tibetan activists support negotiating with the Chinese government for greater autonomy, rather than full independence.
“He drew a line in the sand here today. He’s saying unless you hold out for Tibetan independence, there’s no hope at all,” Jamyang Norbu said.
Tenzin Dorjee said that the last time he spoke with the activist was by phone in June, while he was hosting a fund-raiser in Queens. Lobga Rangzen called just as the event was wrapping up, apologizing that he could not make it but asking Tenzin Dorjee to call an Uber for an elderly man who had come but did not know how to order a car.
“This is who he is, helping people all the time,” Tenzin said.
Claire Fahy contributed reporting from New York.
