The Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Tibetan: རྔ་བ་བོད་རིགས་དང་ཆང་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ་; Chinese: 阿坝藏族羌族自治州) is an autonomous prefecture in Sichuan, whose capital is Barkam town (Chinese: 马尔康 Ma'erkang). It has an area of 83,201 km².
Ngawa, also known as Ngaba, is the site of the epicenter of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which over 20,000 of its residents died.
The area has also been at the heart of the wave of self-immolations of ethnic Tibetans in China during the years 2011 and 2012. About half of the self-immolations happened in Ngawa Prefecture; very few of them happened in Tibet Autonomous Region itself.
Read more about Ngawa Tibetan And Qiang Autonomous Prefecture: Demographics, Languages, History, Administrative Divisions, Tourism, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the word autonomous:
“Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)