Zeenews Bureau
Beijing: Thousands of Tibetan students came on streets to protest against Chinese rule on Tuesday as four more ethnic Tibetans staged self immolation and twenty others were injured, according to a BBC news report.
The students were protesting over a government booklet calling the Tibetan language irrelevant, exile groups said.
More than 80 Tibetans in China have set themselves on fire since 2009 in protest against what overseas supporters say is China’s strict control over Tibet’s Buddhist culture and a suffocating security presence in Tibetan regions.
The self-immolations were reported on Sunday and Monday in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.
“At least 20 students were hospitalised on Monday after a protest turned violent in Qinghai province’s Hainan prefecture,” US broadcaster Radio Free Asia said in an emailed statement.
London-based exile group Free Tibet said up to 1,000 students took part in the demonstration.
Radio Free Asia added, “Students were angry over a booklet distributed at Tsolho Medical Institute in Hainan that called Tibetan irrelevant and condemned immolation protests by Tibetans as acts of stupidity.”
“Students burned the books in their protest,” Radio Free Asia said.
Hainan Government and police officials referred calls to other departments where the phone rang unanswered on Tuesday.
The broadcaster also quoted anonymous sources inside China’s Tibetan areas as saying that teenaged nun Sangay Dolmas died from self-immolation on Sunday in Qinghai’s Tongren county.
On Monday, 18-year-old Kunchok Tsering died after burning himself in Gansu province’s Xiahe county while in Sichuan’s Seda country a 20-year-old former monk, Wang Gyal, self-immolated though his condition was not immediately known, it said.
