Police control Tibetan town after monk's suicide protest

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

DPA

Tsewang Norbu in an undated photo. Protesting Chinese rule in Tibet, Tsewang Norbu burned himself to death on August 15, 2011. (Photo/Free Tibet)

Beijing - Paramilitary police controlled a monastery town in south-western China's Sichuan province on Tuesday following the death of a Tibetan monk who set fire to himself to protest Chinese rule, sources said.

'Daofu is under (police) control,' said a receptionist at a hotel in the town, which is known as Dawu in Tibetan.

'Don't ask me (more),' the receptionist told the German Press Agency dpa, 'All the phones are under surveillance.'

The India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said restrictions on the movement of local Tibetans and on telephone and internet services had been 'severely tightened' in Daofu, especially around the Nyitso Monastery.

'Sources say that thousands of Chinese troops have been deployed in and around the monastery and armed guards can be seen everywhere on the street, on the road and in Tibetan neighborhoods of Tawo (Daofu),' the centre reported.

It said police had tried to seize the body of Tsewang Norbu, the monk who died on Monday, after other monks carried his body back towards the monastery.

Tibetan exile groups reported that Tsewang Norbu, 29, set fire to himself around midday in the centre of Daofu, which is in Sichuan's traditionally Tibetan district of Ganzi, or Kardze.

Witnesses told London-based Free Tibet that Tsewang Norbu shouted: 'We Tibetan people want freedom', 'Long live the Dalai Lama' and 'Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet'.

The Chinese government's Xinhua news agency later confirmed the monk's death but quoted local officials as saying it was 'unclear why he had burnt himself.'

The death is the second of a Tibetan monk this year, following a similar self-immolation in Sichuan's neighbouring Ngaba district in March.

'Today's news exposes how desperate some Tibetans feel,' Free Tibet's director Stephanie Brigden said in a statement on Monday.

Police detained dozens of Buddhist nuns, monks and other Tibetans after several peaceful protests in recent months in Ganzi.

The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's highest spiritual leader, has lived in exile since he fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule of Tibet.