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Detentions reported in Tibet capital after immolations | |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Reports from Tibet say Chinese security forces have launched a wave of detentions in Lhasa following two self-immolations there on Sunday. | |
Witnesses to the immolations had been arrested and Tibetans from outside Lhasa sent home, the reports said. | |
The two Tibetan men set themselves on fire outside the Jokhang temple in an apparent anti-China protest. | |
There have been several such incidents in Tibetan areas outside Tibet but these were the first in Lhasa. | |
One of the men died while the other "survived with injuries", Xinhua news agency said. Both were reportedly Tibetans from outside Tibet. | |
Meanwhile a Tibetan mother of three has died after setting herself on fire in Sichuan province, reports say. | |
The woman, in her 30s, set herself on fire outside a monastery in Aba county, an ethnically Tibetan area where many of the self-immolations have taken place. | |
'Expelled' | |
US broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported that an estimated 600 Tibetans had been rounded up in Lhasa since the incident on Sunday, citing unidentified sources. | |
Foreign media are banned from the area, making reports difficult to verify. Tibetan groups with contacts in Lhasa say that number cannot yet be confirmed. | |
But Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, told the BBC that he had also spoken to people with contacts in Lhasa who said arrests were taking place. | |
"We have been told that Tibetans who do not belong to Lhasa have been expelled to their native places," he said. | |
Tsering Tsomo, of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala, said her organisation had heard about arrests of people who had witnessed the self-immolations on Sunday. | |
She said the temple had now been closed to foreigners and pilgrims, and the site of the self-immolations condoned off. | |
The BBC contacted three government departments in Lhasa, but they either did not pick up the phone or said they knew nothing about the arrests. | |
More than 30 Tibetans - mostly young monks and nuns - have set themselves on fire since March 2011. Many of them are reported to have died while the condition of some remains unknown. | |
Most of the incidents have take place in ethnically Tibetan areas outside Tibet. | Most of the incidents have take place in ethnically Tibetan areas outside Tibet. |
China's leaders blame the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader, for inciting the self-immolations and encouraging separatism. | China's leaders blame the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader, for inciting the self-immolations and encouraging separatism. |
He rejects this, and both activist groups and the Tibetan government-in-exile say the self-immolations are protests against tight Chinese control of the region and religious repression. | He rejects this, and both activist groups and the Tibetan government-in-exile say the self-immolations are protests against tight Chinese control of the region and religious repression. |
The woman who set herself on fire in Aba county on Wednesday was identified as a mother of two daughters and a son. She died at the scene, the reports said. |
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