Two teenagers have set themselves on fire near a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in southwest China amid rumours that dozens of monks were ready to “sacrifice their lives”, rights groups said Friday. The teenagers – Choepel and Khayang – were former monks from Sichuan province’s Kirti monastery, the scene of repeated protests, the London-based Free Tibet said in statement.
The latest incidents – confirmed by another rights group with contacts in the region – take the number of people reported to have set themselves on fire to seven this year. Free Tibet, an activist group, said there were unconfirmed reports that Choepel, 19, had died while the condition of Khayang, 18, was not known. The former monks were wearing street clothes when they set themselves alight on Friday morning in the centre of Aba town.
“Rumours are circulating that dozens of monks are now ready to sacrifice their lives,” Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden said in a statement.
Brigden said there were reports that pamphlets had been distributed around the monastery and market place in Aba warning of further deaths if “Chinese policies at the monastery and in the town continue”. Many Tibetans in China are angry about what they view as increasing domination by the country’s majority Han ethnic group.
35 dead in road crash: At least 35 people were killed in a highway accident in northern China on Friday, state media reported.
The incident occurred in the port city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local authorities. Further details were not provided in the brief dispatch. The fatal crash was the latest on China’s notoriously dangerous roads, where drivers often flout seldom-enforced traffic safety laws. In September, nine people were killed and over 20 injured when a passenger bus rear-ended a cement truck on a highway in eastern China’s Anhui province.
