Last week New York Time ran an article about the silence of Chinese intellectuals amid waves of Tibetan self-immolations. Gao Yu, a Chinese human rights activist commented [zh] on Twitter:

Chinese people are so good at being indifferent. That's why there is the so-called phenomena of Xiang Lin Sao [a tragic character in Lu Xun‘s novel]. When seeing those who keep telling one's misfortune, the “great Han people”‘s reaction to tragedy is the shifting from “curiosity” to “frustration” and then to “mockery”. We are now going through such stage. We are not religious, but we can't just deny our humanity. When some human immolated themselves one after the other, how can we do nothing.