Perilous
Times
Tenth Tibetan monk burns self in west China
By Chris Buckley and Sabrina Mao | Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Tibetan Buddhist monk doused himself in fuel
and set himself ablaze in far western China on Tuesday, the tenth
ethnic Tibetan this year to resort to the extreme form of protest,
an overseas advocacy group said.
The Free Tibet group said the latest self-immolation happened
outside a monastery in Ganzi in Sichuan province, about 150 km (95
miles) south of Aba, the site of eight of the last nine
self-immolations since March to protest against religious controls
imposed by the Chinese government.
In a statement emailed late on Tuesday, Free Tibet said it had no
information about the monk's name, whereabouts, or whether he
survived the incident.
Nor did it specify its sources.
Government officials, police and workers at several hotels in
Ganzi, called Kandze by Tibetans, told Reuters they did not know
about the reported self-immolation.
"I don't know about this, and even if I did, I couldn't be
loose-lipped," said an official in the Ganzi county office.
Most people in Ganzi and neighbouring Aba are ethnic Tibetan
herders and farmers, and many see themselves as members of a wider
Tibetan region encompassing the official Tibetan Autonomous Region
and other areas across the vast highlands of China's west.
The string of self-immolations, at least five of them fatal,
"represents a wider rejection of China's occupation of Tibet",
said Stephanie Brigden, the director of Free Tibet, which
campaigns for self-rule for the region.
The group reported "significantly increased numbers of security
personnel including in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, hundreds of
kilometres away from where the self-immolations have taken place".
For the Chinese government, the protests are a small but
destabilising challenge to its regional policies, which it says
have lifted Tibetans out of poverty and servitude.
China has ruled what it calls the Tibet Autonomous Region since
Communist troops marched in in 1950. It rejects criticisms of
rights groups and exiled Tibetans and has condemned the
self-immolations as destructive and immoral.
In March 2008, protests and deadly riots against the Chinese
presence spread across Tibetan regions, triggering sometimes
deadly confrontations with troops and police.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who China
condemns as a supporter of violent separatism for his homeland,
last week led hundreds of maroon-robed monks, nuns and lay
Tibetans in prayer to mourn those who have burned themselves to
death or been imprisoned.
The Dalai Lama denies advocating violence and insists he wants
only real autonomy for his homeland, from which he fled in 1959
after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
But the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said the Dalai Lama should
take the blame for the burnings, and repeated Beijing's line that
Tibetans are free to practise their Buddhist faith.
(Reporting by Chris Buckley and Sabrina Mao; Editing by Paul Tait)