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Tibetan sets himself alight in China: group
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Aug 6, 2012


A Tibetan man in southwest China set himself on fire Monday, the latest in a series of shocking protests against Chinese rule, an overseas human rights group said.

The man set himself alight along the main street of Ngaba which sits on the Tibet plateau in a Tibetan-inhabited area of China's Sichuan province, the London-based Free Tibet said in a statement.

Local government officials in the town, known as Aba in Chinese, were not immediately available for comment.

Security personnel quickly extinguished the flames and took the man away in a security vehicle, the statement said.

He was believed to be still alive, although his upper body was badly burned, it added.

More than 40 people have set themselves on fire in recent months in Tibetan-inhabited areas of China in protest at repressive government policies, the group said, with most incidents linked to monks or former monks of Aba's Kirti monastery.

Tibetans have long chafed under China's rule over the vast Himalayan region, charging that Beijing has curbed religious freedoms and their culture is being eroded by an influx of Han Chinese, the country's main ethnic group.

Beijing, however, says Tibetans enjoy religious freedom and have benefited from improved living standards brought on by China's economic expansion.

"As the world's media focuses on the discipline of Chinese athletes, Chinese state repression is driving Tibetans to set fire to themselves under a media blackout," said Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden.

"China is competing in the Olympic Games despite having broken every commitment on human rights made during its bid for the 2008 Games."

The latest incident comes after a young Tibetan man who set himself alight in June died from his injuries on Wednesday last week, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).

Prior to that two men set themselves on fire in front of the Jokhang temple, a renowned Buddhist temple in the centre of Lhasa, on May 27 in the first such incident to hit the city.

Lhasa was the scene of violent anti-Chinese government protests in 2008, which later spread to other areas inhabited by Tibetans, and authorities have kept the city under tight security since then.

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China pulls paper over flood story: rights group
Beijing (AFP) Aug 7, 2012 - China has pulled a Beijing newspaper from the newsstands after it criticised the official handling of July floods and said the government had underreported the death toll, a rights group said Tuesday.

Authorities in China's capital have faced strong public criticism over their response to the heaviest rains in more than 60 years, which submerged major highways and killed 79 people at the last official count.

But the government has been quick to censor criticism in state-run media, and Chinese Human Rights Defenders said this week's edition of the Economic Observer had been pulled and the critical article deleted from the paper's website

The article, seen by AFP, focused on three men who were seen on July 21 being washed away by flood waters in Beijing's mountain resort town of Shidu and the subsequent search for them by their family and friends.

The family ordeal was contrasted with repeated statements by the township government that "no one died or was injured" in Shidu.

Without directly accusing the government, the report portrayed officials as seeking to burnish their response to the disaster by downplaying the severity of the situation and cynically refusing to report the numbers of people missing.

An official at the paper, when contacted by AFP, refused to comment on the censorship of the paper except to say there was a "printing problem" with the Monday edition.

The official death toll from the disaster, which hit outlying areas of the city worst, proved a particularly sensitive issue, with many Beijing residents questioning the initial figure of 37 issued the day after the floods.

A report by the Hong Kong-based China Media Project, which monitors censorship in China, said authorities were "moving aggressively" to contain negative coverage of the floods, which has focused on a lack of warning and the inadequacy of drainage systems.

In July, Beijing's propaganda chief Lu Wei told media outlets to stick to stories of "achievements worthy of praise and tears", the Beijing Times daily reported.



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SINO DAILY
Workshop blast in east China kills 13
Beijing (AFP) Aug 6, 2012
An explosion ripped through a family-owned workshop in east China's Zhejiang province on Sunday, killing 13 people and injuring 14, state media reported. The blast in the lock-processing workshop in Wenzhou city's Ouhai district happened after sparks from a polishing machine ignited thick dust, local government officials said, according to the Xinhua news agency. The workshop was operati ... read more


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