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Self-immolating Tibetan monk recovering - Xinhua

Reuters

A Tibetan monk who set himself on fire in protest during a prayer festival in western China last week is out of danger and recovering in hospital, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, citing medical staff.

The monk started the blaze after walking out of a monastery in Ngaba county, an ethnic Tibetan area in Sichuan province, carrying a Tibetan flag with a picture of the exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, Free Tibet Campaign, an activist group, said last week.

A spokesman for the group citing unidentified sources said the monk was taken to a van and driven away after falling to the ground after gun shots were heard.

The monk, a 24-year-old student at the Kirti monastery had been treated for burns to more than half his body, Xinhua said.

“He came back to life after 12 hours’ treatment … He is out of danger now,” Xinhua quoted Shen Yongcai, a physician at the Ngaba hospital, as saying.

The agency said a monk at the same monastery had confessed that he had “made up and spread rumours” that police had shot the student after he set himself on fire to “create greater disturbances so as to attract the attention from overseas”.

The sensitive 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile after a failed insurrection against China falls this month, prompting authorities to bolster security and restrict travel to ethnic Tibetan areas.

Corrected version published on 6 March 2009

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