Tibetan monks being guarded by Chinese paramilitary police. - AFP Photo.
BEIJING: The Chinese minister of public security has visited the Tibetan Kirti monastery in the area where a series of monks have set themselves on fire.
Nine Buddhist monks and two nuns have set themselves alight in ethnically Tibetan parts of southwest China this year in protest at religious repression. Many came from Kirti monastery in Sichuan’s Aba County, which has been under virtual lockdown since a young monk named Phuntsog set himself on fire and died in March, sparking mass protests there.
The ministry said, “In discussion with the monastery’s management committee, Meng Jianzhu noted the important historical contribution of Tibetan Buddhism to the unity of the country and solidarity between different ethnicities.” Meng said he hoped the monks would “continue to work to promote patriotic and religious education, solidarity between ethnicities, economic development and social progress”.
London-based Free Tibet on Saturday published photos of Tibetans arrested by security forces in China being paraded with placards around their necks indicating their names and the crimes of which they were accused. According to the Chinese dissident website Boxun.com, the pictures were taken in the ethnic Tibetan prefectures of Gazni and Aba in Sichuan province.
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 refutes 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.