Tibetan self-immolator mourned

BEIJING: Thousands of Tibetans gathered to mourn a farmer who died after dousing himself in kerosene and setting himself on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, a US broadcaster said.

A London-based rights group said the funeral turned into a protest march, with thousands calling for freedom and the return to Tibet of the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader. The incident, as with most reported unrest in Tibetan areas, could not be independently verified.

Nearly 30 Tibetans had set themselves on fire over the past year to protest the suppression of their religion and culture and to call for the return the Dalai Lama, who fled the Himalayan region in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule and is reviled by Beijing.

The communist government had blamed supporters of the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations.

US broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA) said in an emailed statement that Sonam Thargyal, a 44-year-old farmer and father of four, fastened cotton padding to his body with iron wire and doused himself with kerosene before setting himself on fire on Saturday in Tongren, a monastery town in western China’s Qinghai province. He also drank kerosene, the broadcaster said.

“The Tibetans who were at the scene attempted to put out the flames, but death was very fast because of the kerosene inside and outside the body,” RFA uoted Dorjee Wangchuk, a Tibetan exiled in Dharamsala, India, with close ties to the Tongren community, as saying. Thargyal called out for an end to Chinese rule in Tibetan-populated areas, the return of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan language rights, RFA said.

As many as 7,000 Tibetans took part in Thargyal’s funeral and cremation ceremony, the broadcaster said.

The London-based rights group Free Tibet posted photos on its website of what it said was Thargyal’s charred body covered in ceremonial yellow silk scarves and hundreds of people marching up a hill to the local cremation site, where his remains were burned.

A man who answered the telephone at the government office of Huangnan prefecture, which oversees Tongren, said he had not heard reports of an immolation or a protest.