Another Tibetan monk self-immolates, hundreds protest

Feb 14, 2012, 4:49 GMT

Beijing - A teenage Tibetan monk has set fire to himself in a restive town in south-western China, while some 200 Tibetans protested in another town, reports said on Tuesday.

Lobsang Gyatso, 19, set fire to himself on Monday in Aba town, or Ngaba in Tibetan, London-based Free Tibet said.

Police put out the flames and took away Lobsang, who was a monk at nearby Kirti monastery. It was not known if he survived the self-immolation, the group said.

The Tibetan government-in-exile, based in the Indian town of Dharamsala, quoted witnesses as saying two other Tibetan youths were badly beaten by police during Monday's self-immolation.

Chinese state media said Aba officials confirmed the self-immolation and the monk's identity as Lobsang Gyatso.

'Police rushed to put out the fire and sent him to a local hospital,' the official Xinhua news agency quoted a local government spokesman as saying.

Lobsang's protest was the 24th self-immolation reported in Tibetan areas of China in the past two years, most of them in or near Aba.

It came on the same day that the Chinese government confirmed the death of a 19-year-old nun who self-immolated in Aba on Saturday amid signs of escalating protests and tougher policing by Chinese authorities.

US-based Radio Free Asia quoted Tibetan exiles as saying police in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, detained a popular Tibetan cultural expert last week.

Dawa Dorje, a writer and government researcher from Naqu town, or Nagchu, was arrested at Lhasa's Gonggar Airport after he returned from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, the broadcaster said.

Dawa had organized a conference of Tibetan singers and intellectuals in Chengdu and asked them to produce works that promoted Tibetan language and culture.

He had also raised concerns over the closure of some Tibetan monasteries after monks and nuns fled, the sources were quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, around 200 Tibetans protested in the main square of Yushu town, or Jyekundo, in Qinghai province on Saturday, followed by a smaller protest on Sunday, Free Tibet said.

In another development, a state-run newspaper in Sichuan's Ganzi prefecture has confirmed earlier reports by Tibetan exiles that police shot dead two fugitive Tibetans who had fled after violence in Luhuo town, or Drango, last month.

At least six other Tibetans died in clashes with security forces in Luhuo and the nearby Seda area of Sichuan's Ganzi prefecture last month, according to reports by Tibetan exile groups, international rights groups and Radio Free Asia.

The reports suggested growing tension in several Tibetan areas, with Free Tibet saying police were searching people at checkpoints around Aba on Monday.

It quoted sources in Yushu as saying paramilitary police there were also restricting the movement of local residents, with some people confined to their homes and others banned from leaving the town.

About 100 Free Tibet activists protested outside the White House in Washington on Monday before the arrival of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who was scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Several activists unfurled a giant banner saying 'Tibet will be Free' on Washington's Arlington Memorial Bridge ahead of Xi's visit.

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