Chinese Authorities Attempt to Take Tibetan Monk’s Body

Following the self-immolation of a Tibetan monk in China’s southwest, Chinese authorities dispatched more than a thousand policemen to besiege the monastery where his body was kept, prompting fears of a fresh crackdown in the Tibetan-populated Garze Prefecture.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the police have cut off electricity, water, and food supplies for the 100 monks in the Nyitso monastery and attempted to take the body of the 29-year-old Tsewang Norbu.

To support those inside the monastery, many nearby Tibetan residents, who had their telephone and Internet services shut down by local Chinese communist authorities, flocked to the monastery to confront the police, the source said.

“The power and water have been cut off for days, and we have no food supplies coming in,” one monk told AFP in a phone interview on Tuesday from inside the monastery in Sichuan Province, which is adjacent to Tibet.

Tsewang Norbu, according to the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, set himself on fire on Monday in front of the county government building after drinking and spraying himself with petrol in protest of Chinese authorities’ ban on the celebration of the Dalai Lama’s July 6 birthday.

While outside the building, he had thrown a massive amount of pamphlets into the air and called out, “We Tibetan people want freedom,” “Long live the Dalai Lama,” and “Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet.”

Upon his death, he was brought back to the monasteries by fellow monks.

Tsewang Norbu’s self-immolation marks the second reported case this year in Sichuan, where several protests have erupted in recent years due to discontent toward the Chinese authorities’ repressive ethnic policies.

Read the original Chinese article.

chinareports@epochtimes.com