Tibetan monk in self-immolation protest dies

A TIBETAN Buddhist monk burned himself to death in south-west China calling for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader condemned by Beijing as a separatist, a group campaigning for Tibetan self-rule said.

The monk’s self-immolation could spark fresh tensions in heavily ethnic Tibetan parts of Sichuan, which neighbours the official Tibet region, following protests in March when a Tibetan monk there also burned himself to death.

The London-based Free Tibet organisation said the latest immolation-protest was carried out by a 29-year-old monk, Tsewang Norbu, who was from a monastery in Tawu, about 150km from where the last immolation happened.

“Tsewang Norbu drank petrol, sprayed petrol on himself and then set himself on fire,” Free Tibet said.

“He was heard calling out: ‘We Tibetan people want freedom’, ‘Long live the Dalai Lama’ and ‘Let the Dalai Lama Return to Tibet’. He is believed to have died at the scene,” the group said.

China’s official Xinhua news agency also reported the monk’s self-immolation, but said “it was unclear why he had burned himself”.

Tawu, called Daofu in Chinese, is in a largely ethnic Tibetan part of western Sichuan that many advocates of self-rule say should form part of a larger homeland under Tibetan control.

Tensions over the fate of the exiled Dalai Lama and his calls for Tibetan self-determination have continued to dog the region, sometimes flaring into protests.