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Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside UN Headquarters in New York
A 52-year-old man died after setting himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters on July 2. New York City police responded to the incident and transported him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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A man set himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in New York on July 2 and was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital. New York City police responded to a 911 call at approximately 6:30 p.m. ET and found the 52-year-old man with severe burns at the scene.
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Officers transported him to the hospital. The man carried a Tibetan flag during the incident, police said. He worked as an Uber driver, according to a police department spokesperson. Police have not disclosed the man’s identity or potential motive and continue to investigate the incident.
The Tibetan National Congress of New York and New Jersey identified the man as Lobsang Palden, also known as Lobga Rangzen. The group stated that he broadcast a Facebook livestream before the act in which he called for Tibetan independence and spoke about the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
The organization said his actions stemmed from commitment to Tibet and were not driven by personal circumstances.
Lobsang Palden’s death marked the first known case of a Tibetan self-immolation in the United States, the Tibetan National Congress said. More than 150 people have self-immolated inside Tibet since 2009 in protest against the Chinese occupation in 1950, according to the nonprofit group Free Tibet. During Human Rights Day in December 2022, the U.S.
Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Chinese officials over their roles in the CCP’s human rights abuses in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The department said at the time that Tibetans have been subject to serious human rights abuses in the region, including arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and physical abuse.
