Teenage monk self-immolates in China

Five years after an explosion of unrest on the Tibetan plateau, the region is again in crisis. This time the world is looking away

Chinese police opened fire on Tibetans marking the Dalai Lama's 78th birthday, shooting at least one monk in the head and seriously wounding several other people, two overseas groups said.

A Tibetan Buddhist monastery in southwestern China remained sealed off by police on Thursday, local residents said, after a young monk set himself on fire and died, triggering protests there.Rights group said the 21-year-old monk's self-immolation and death Wednesday, the third anniversary of anti-government unrest in the area, sparked demonstrations near the Kirti monastery that were broken up by police."The crossroads to the monastery are blocked by police," an employee at a hotel near the monastery in Sichuan province told AFP.

A prominent monk who fled Tibet in 1959 and co-founded the West's first Tibetan monastery has been killed in China along with two other people, police said, with his brother saying he was "assassinated". Akong Tulku Rinpoche was the co-founder of Samye Ling in the rolling hills of southern Scotland, the first and largest Tibetan Buddhist centre in Europe.

Two Tibetans have died in a security crackdown on a Buddhist monastery in southwest China, an activist group said, after the restive area was closed to foreigners.Authorities have sealed off Kirti Monastery in Sichuan province and ordered a re-education programme there following unrest triggered last month when a young monk set himself on fire and died in an apparent anti-government protest.

Two Tibetan teenagers died after they set fire to themselves in protest at Chinese rule, reports and Western rights groups said, in a rare instance of a double self-immolation in the restive region. The former primary school classmates were named as 18-year-old Sonam Dargye and a 17-year-old identified by US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) only as Rinchen.

A Tibetan Buddhist monastery in southwestern China remained sealed off by police on Thursday, local residents said, after a young monk set himself on fire and died, triggering protests there.Rights groups said the monk's self-immolation on Wednesday -- the third anniversary of anti-government unrest in the area -- and subsequent death sparked demonstrations near the Kirti monastery that were broken up by police.