Tibetan father ‘sets himself alight’ in Sichuan province

A father-of-two set himself on fire in protest at Beijing’s rule in Tibetan regions, triggering clashes and a security crackdown, a US broadcaster and an overseas pressure group said on Thursday.

Radio Free Asia said Konchok Tseten, 30, torched himself in Aba prefecture, an ethnically Tibetan area of the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan which has seen a wave of similar actions.

He was severely burned, and local Tibetans clashed with police as they tried to stop them taking him away, sources told RFA, which is funded by the US government.

“Details of Tseten’s condition were not immediately available amid a clampdown on information... following the self-immolation” late on Tuesday, the report said.

London-based campaign group the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) named the man as Kunchok Tseten, and said his wife and some relatives were believed to have been taken into custody.

The campaign group said on Thursday that shops and restaurants in a township in Aba, which is known as Ngaba in Tibetan, have been closed and some mobile phones confiscated in an attempt to stop news of the incident spreading.

There have been more than 120 such acts in Tibet and elsewhere in China since 2009, most of them fatal.