Hundreds of grieving Tibetans on Sunday joined the funeral procession for a 16-year-old schoolboy who died after setting himself on fire to protest against Chinese rule.
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Dorjee Tsering had self immolated during a protest against the Chinese government in Dehradun on Monday. He was rushed to New Delhi and treated at Safdarjung Hospital, where he died Thursday night, said Ms Poonam Dhanda, a spokeswoman for the hospital.
China plans to build a second railway line to Tibet, connecting the Tibetan capital city Lhasa with the south-western city of Chengdu.
According to the People’s Daily, the planned railway would connect the Tibetan Autonomous Region’s capital of Lhasa with Sichuan’s provincial capital of Chengdu.
Tibetan exile sources say at least 114 monks and laypeople have self-immolated over the past five years, with majority dying.
Tibet is a highly sensitive region, not just because of continued opposition by many Tibetans to Chinese control, but because of the region’s strategic position next to neighbours India, Nepal and Myanmar. He fled Tibet to India in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese forces who had occupied the Himalayan region a decade earlier.
Padma also reiterated China’s opposition to any invitation to the exiled Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own territory.
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Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and others for inciting violations and a wave of self-immolations among Tibetans and says it has made vast investments to develop the region’s economy and improve quality of life. He has been living in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala since then.
