China Calls Tibetans Immolators Criminals & Outcasts

07.03.2012

Chinese officials sought Wednesday to discredit about two dozen Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest China's rule over their region as outcasts, criminals and mentally ill people manipulated by the exiled Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader has said he does not encourage the self-immolations. However, Chinese officials have sought to portray the past year's wave of immolations — including three since Saturday — as the result of outside orchestration rather than what activists say is local unrest over the government's suppression of Tibetan religion and culture.

Many of the protesters have been linked to a Buddhist monastery in the mountainous Aba prefecture of Sichuan province.

"Some of the suicides are committed by clerics returning to lay life, and they all have criminal records or suspicious activities. They have a very bad reputation in society," said Wu Zegang, an ethnic Tibetan who is the government's top administrator in Aba.

Wu told reporters in Beijing that the self-immolations were "orchestrated and supported" by the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence forces. He said that before setting themselves on fire, the immolators shouted "independence for Tibet and other slogans that aim to divide the nation."