HONG KONG — The police in a restive Tibetan area have arrested 12 people and detained dozens more accused of playing a part in acts of self-immolation by Tibetan monks and others protesting Chinese rule, the state-run news media said Thursday, as the government stepped up its campaign of attributing the protests to a plot inspired by the exiled Dalai Lama.
The announcement of the crackdown in Qinghai Province in western China comes as the number of self-immolations reported in Tibetan parts of the country over the past four years approached 100, a somber milestone that has appeared to spur efforts by the Chinese police and officials to crack down on people and groups seeking greater freedom for Tibetans.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said that since November, the police in Huangnan, a heavily Tibetan prefecture of Qinghai, have formally arrested 12 suspects and detained 58 other people over self-immolations in the area.
One of those arrested, whose Tibetan name is rendered as Puhua in the Chinese-language report, was charged with homicide and accused of giving speeches encouraging self-immolations at funerals for people who died by engulfing themselves in fire, the news agency report said. It did not give details about the other suspects, when they were held by the police or the accusations against them.
Like other official Chinese reports on the self-immolations, Xinhua presented them as the outcome of a conspiracy inspired by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and groups outside China seeking to challenge the Communist Party’s hold over Tibetan regions in the country. The Dalai Lama has not made any explicit statements in support of the acts, and his supporters have dismissed the accusations as groundless attempts to divert attention from the failings of Chinese rule.
The Xinhua report said the self-immolations were “incited by the Dalai’s clique abroad and then implemented within the country, with photos and other personal information about the self-immolators then sent abroad to stir up attention.”
The self-immolations began in February 2009 as protests against Chinese policies that many Tibetans see as a threat to their traditional homeland and Buddhist beliefs. Reports and pictures of the protests and other acts of defiance against Chinese authorities have been spirited out of the areas to advocacy groups abroad. At least 81 Tibetans died after their protests, according to the International Campaign for Tibet, a group based in London that advocates self-rule for Tibet.
The Voice of America broadcast service on Wednesday denied accusations made by a Chinese television program and newspaper that Voice of America encouraged Tibetan self-immolations. Many self-immolations have occurred in traditionally Tibetan areas of provinces next to the Tibetan Autonomous Region, the administrative area that China established in 1951. Qinghai Province is among those areas, as are parts of Sichuan and Gansu Provinces.
Chinese courts rarely find in favor of suspects in crime cases, and the latest reported arrests and detentions are likely to end in at least some trials and convictions. A court in Sichuan Province imposed heavy sentences on Jan. 31 on two Tibetans after declaring them guilty of urging eight people to burn themselves. Three of those people died.
Despite the Chinese government’s crackdown, there have already been three self-immolations by Tibetans this year. The second one died.
The Dalai Lama fled his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist forces that entered Lhasa, his seat of power, in 1951. Many Tibetans revere the Dalai Lama, who is 77, and observers have said that when he dies, contention could intensify between the Chinese government and his supporters about designating his successor.
