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NEW DELHI (AP) — A Tibetan exile who set himself on fire in India to protest a visit by China’s leader died Wednesday, while hundreds of other activists were being held without charge before the president’s arrival.
Jamphel Yeshi, 27, set himself on fire Monday at a demonstration in New Delhi. He ran screaming past other protesters and the news media before falling to the ground, his skin and clothing burned and melted together. He was taken to a hospital, but was unable to overcome his injuries.
“Martyr Jamphel Yeshi’s sacrifice will be written in golden letters in the annals of our freedom struggle,” said Dhondup Lhadar, an activist with the Tibetan Youth Congress. “He will live on to inspire and encourage the future generations of Tibetans.”
About 30 people have set themselves on fire over the past year in ethnic Tibetan areas of China in protest against Beijing’s heavy-handed rule in the region. They say the crackdown in Tibetan areas is so oppressive that there is no other way for Tibetan people to voice their protest.
On Tuesday, a U.S. Senate panel passed a nonbinding resolution mourning the deaths and calling on China to end what it describes as repressive policies targeting Tibetans.
Beijing has blamed the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India for decades, for inciting the self-immolations and has called the protesters’ actions a form of terrorism.
“This is his last attempt to force the Chinese central government to allow his return to Tibet,” Li Xiaojun, an official with the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, wrote Wednesday in the Hindustan Times newspaper.
China’s leader in Tibet, Padma Choling, said the Dalai Lama and his followers were trying to hang onto privileges they enjoyed when Tibet was a feudal society and most of its people were basically serfs with no individual rights. China on Wednesday marked what it calls Serfs Emancipation Day — the day in 1958 when government troops took control of Tibet, and the Dalai Lama fled into exile.
“No matter what tricks the Dalai and his clique use, the strong will by Tibetan people to oppose separation and safeguard the country’s unity will not change,” Choling said, according to a transcript posted on a government-run news site.
President Hu Jintao was expected to arrive Wednesday afternoon in New Delhi for a summit with India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.
Indian police and soldiers have orders to restrict the movement of the city’s Tibetan population while Hu is in town, police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. Police have surrounded the city’s Tibetan neighborhoods, erecting metal barricades and refusing to allow young people to leave unless they have medical or court appointments, in which case they’re being escorted by police.
Hundreds of Tibetan activists have been rounded up, including poet Tenzin Tsundue on Tuesday night. The prominent activist from the Himalayan region who in the past has staged high-profile protests during Chinese visits had just finished speaking to a meeting of the Tibetan Woman’s Association when he was taken into custody under laws that allow “preventative detention.”
He “has a long history of protesting at such events,” Bhagat said.
Activists condemned the crackdown.
“This action is unlawful and a complete surrender to the Chinese pressure and the surrender of our own national pride,” Indian intellectual Rajiv Vora said in a statement.
Many activists had managed to evade the police cordons and were trying to stage protests across the city, said Tenzin Choekyi of the Tibetan Youth Congress. At least a dozen had been taken into custody Wednesday morning as they tried to reach a United Nations office where they planned to demonstrate.
The group said a grand funeral “deserving of a martyr” is planned for Yeshi in the Tibetan exiled community’s headquarters of Dharmsala, in the northern India.
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Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report from Beijing.
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