'First immolation attempt' in China's Tibet reported

A former Buddhist monk has set himself alight in Tibet, a campaign group said Friday, citing Tibetan exiles in India and calling it the first such protest in the vast autonomous region of southwest China. The report from the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) follows a series of self-immolations by Buddhist monks and nuns in Tibetan-inhabited regions of the country, where ethnic Tibetans have long chafed against Chinese rule. The former monk, said to be in his 40s, is reported to have survived and been taken to hospital in Tibet's Changdu prefecture. Police in Changdu told AFP by telephone that they were unaware of the incident, which is reported to have occurred on Thursday. "Reports that have been micro-blogged and uploaded on Facebook accounts in Tibetan indicate that the Tibetan, named as Tenzin Phuntsog, survived and has been hospitalised," said the ICT in a statement. It said the former monk was reported to be from a monastery that some sources said was under lockdown following rumours of a bomb blast at a local government building on October 26. "If the accounts that have emerged so far are correct this would be the first self-immolation to occur in the Tibet Autonomous Region," the ICT said. Rights groups say nine monks and two nuns have have set themselves on fire this year in Sichuan province, which borders Changdu, to protest against religious repression of Tibetan Buddhists, and that at least seven have died. Many were from Kirti monastery in Sichuan's Aba county, which has been under virtual lockdown since a young monk named Phuntsog set fire to himself and died in March, sparking mass protests there. Many Tibetans in China accuse the government of enacting religious repression and of eroding their culture, as the country's majority Han ethnic group increasingly moves into historically Tibetan areas. China rejects this, saying Tibetans enjoy religious freedom and pointing to huge investment in development that it says has brought modernisation and a better standard of living.