A protest by Tibetans in China ended in bloodshed Monday after police opened fire, killing one man and injuring at least 30 others, according to reports and human rights groups.
The man killed was Norpa Yonten, a 49-year-old from a township in Draggo county (Luhuo in Mandarin Chinese), Sichuan Province, where the shooting took place.
Tibetans were protesting outside Communist Party offices Monday morning local time, handing out flyers advocating Tibetan freedom, when police violently intervened, according to Free Tibet, a London-based Tibetan human rights group.
The Tibetans who were injured were removed to the nearby Draggo Monastery and tended to; Yonten’s body was also placed there.
The International Campaign for Tibet, another advocacy group for Tibetan self-determination, said that three people were killed and nine wounded, according to Voice of America.
The shooting comes in the midst of a rash of Tibetan self-immolations, both in Tibet and Tibetan regions in China. Since March 2011 at least 16 Tibetans, many of them monks, have died in such self-immolation protests. Draggo is not far from Daofu, where at least two Tibetans set themselves on fire over the last several months.
“Tibetans have resorted to this desperate act out of sheer frustration against the policies and programs of the Chinese authorities aimed at eradicating the Tibetan identity,” according to the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile.
The shooting comes on the first day of the week just after the Chinese New Year, when most families are gathering to celebrate the holiday together.
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