A court in western China sentenced a Tibetan man to 13 years in prison on Friday after convicting him of inciting a Buddhist monk to self-immolate, as local police announced the arrest of 70 more Tibetans on similar charges. The court in the Huangnan area of Qinghai province said the convicted man, identified by the single name Phagpa, was guilty of "intentional homicide" and inciting separatism, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The jailing of Phagpa, 27, followed the sentencing of eight Tibetans last week for inciting self-immolation protests in neighbouring Sichuan and Gansu provinces. The agency earlier quoted Liu Benqian, Qinghai's deputy police chief, as saying police in Huangnan had detained 70 Tibetans suspected of aiding or encouraging self-immolation protests. The arrests were linked to a series of self-immolations in Huangnan since November, Liu said.
London-based Free Tibet said the recent arrests and harsh sentences showed "the rule of law is a fiction in Tibet," where suspects were often coerced into confessions by "threats, reprisals on local communities and even torture." "China's strategy is an ugly mixture of repression and PR and it won't work," Free Tibet said, referring to a propaganda campaign to blame the self-immolations on exiled Tibetans including the Dalai Lama.
"Protests of all kinds in Tibet are a response to the actions of the Chinese government and they will inevitably continue until China recognises that fact," the group said. Xinhua said police found that Phagpa had encouraged a monk in Qinghai's Tongren county to self-immolate, but the monk's sister-in-law dissuaded him from going ahead.
Phagpa promoted Tibetan independence and encouraged people to "stage an illegal demonstration, with himself taking the lead to chant Tibet independence slogans," the agency quoted prosecutors as saying.
About 100 Tibetans have set fire to themselves in China since 2009 to protest against Chinese government policies and call for greater religious, political and cultural autonomy.
The agency quoted Liu as saying that some of the protesters were "frustrated and pessimistic in life," while others motivated by a "strong sense of extreme nationalism showed sympathy with the self-immolators and followed their example."
The government announced a campaign in December to prosecute Tibetans who assisted self-immolation protestors, many of whom are Buddhist monks. Two courts in Sichuan and Gansu convicted eight Tibetans of inciting self-immolation protests last week, handing one a suspended death sentence and jailing the others for up to 12 years.