Interactive visualization of self-immolations in Tibet | Hacker News Reader

Interactive visualization of self-immolations in Tibet

halftone.co

56 pointsm0hit16 comments

105 self-immolations in the past two years. Zero suicide bombings. This is an excellent example of how religions give their hosts different propensities for violence.

And yet, suicide bombings and guerilla warfare in general may be more effective in revolutions. Look at the recent revolutions and uprisings: how many of them succeeded without violence? Not Libya, not Syria, not Egypt. Israel requires constant violence to maintain its nation. The US required violence and guerilla warfare for its independence. And it needed martyrs. As did Ireland. And Bangladesh. And the Chinese Communist Party.

New Zealand, Canada, Australia... All became relatively independent of the UK without warfare, suicide bombings or any kind of violence.

You don't need violence to be effective.

> Canada

umm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellions_of_1837

> After the rebellions died down, more moderate reformers, such as the political partners Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, gained credibility as an alternative voice to the radicals. They proved to be influential when the British government sent Lord Durham, a prominent British reformer

(from that article)

It was not the violence that lead to change, but diplomacy... unless I'm missing something.

Regardless, it doesn't counter my point, unless you want to point out the revolutionary wars Australia and New Zealand had...

You could see it as developed through diplomacy, but the reality was that the british colonies were all given responsible government _after_ the american revolution.

The unrests in Canada merely proved the point that the empire could not adequately control the colonies and they needed to become more self reliant.

This might sound generalist, but I don't think it's fair to look at America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as separate reforms. They were all in the same empire that fell apart.

Anyway, I don't think there's ever diplomacy without at least _threat_ of violence.

Uhhh, New Zealand was never conquered by the British as far as I'm aware. They had to sign a treaty with the Maori no?

> Zero suicide bombings

In Lhasa 2008 riot Tibetans there was like hundreds of innocent Muslim Tibetans and Han Chinese cvilians killed or injuered

Glad you guys like the link.. it's a sad story.

It was also an opportunity to learn TileMill (mapbox.com/tilemill) to generate that styled map.. I recommend checking it out if you like maps/geodata.

A spreadsheet of the data as well: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Al2LIEgoNIx2dEt...

I think the most interesting thing is simply the ages of the people who died - a large percentage are in their teens or early 20s.

That is the time the people can be easily cheated.

This idea is too morbid for me, I'm afraid.

Or perhaps the presentation feels too "light"?

I can read Wiki articles on serial killers, but this seems somehow disrespectful. I'm also concerned because (although I respect Al Jazeera as much as any news source) I wonder if they have an agenda they're pursuing through this piece?

If I'm out of line here let me know why!

Source article on Al Jazeera http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2013/03/2013391...

Sad sad story. Amazing viz that made an immediate impact on the story.

I had no idea there had been a self-immolation here in Yunnan (the far south-eastern point on the map). Thanks for sharing this informative visualisation, even if it is for such a sad state of affairs.

Just to be fair it seems like a good venue to mention that there are plenty of people struggling to have a decent self-directed life around the world, not just in China. Even within China, a great many Han people also have it extremely tough, not to mention other groups subject to recent sinification style policies (such as the Uyghur of Xinjiang).

Truly free, publicly practised religion perhaps exists nowhere within the country, but then again it doesn't exist in most places.

The Chinese government has a hard job guiding this monster of a country given its significant divides and economic and technological trajectory, and the various peoples of China are all struggling to make sense of and get along in what is perhaps the single largest-scale transition of a society that has ever occurred in the history of humanity.

This does not in any way detract from the tragedy of these events, however perhaps it may help to prevent people who have not had the opportunity to spend time here from taking a simplistic or single-faceted perspective or simply getting angry at the Chinese. Nothing is simple as it seems, particularly when you take a look at history.

For those interested in exploring some of the complexities I would recommend http://www.amazon.com/The-Sichuan-Frontier-Tibet-Imperial/dp...

nice use of d3!

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