KATHMANDU: Two Tibetans have set themselves alight in China's western Qinghai province, protesting the continued Chinese rule and crackdown on Tibetan culture. One man reportedly died and the other sustained serious injuries. The incident took place on Wednesday, reports said. Both men were in their 20s. In an email to the Associated Press, the Tibetan Youth Congress, an NGO that campaigns for Tibetan independence from China, said the men themselves alight in Yushu prefecture, which has a large ethnic Tibetan population. According to China's state-run Xinhua news agency, the dead man was a herder and the second man a carpenter from Aba prefecture in Sichuan province, the Associated Press reported. Radio Free Asia named the men as Tenzin Khedup, a former monk, and Ngawang Norphel, adding that the two were holding Tibetan independence flags and shouting pro-independence slogans as they set themselves alight. In recent months, Tibetans have become more forceful in their protests against China's control of Tibet, with dozens lighting themselves on fire. In Nepal's capital, one Tibetan man told Bikyamasr.com that they “do this because there is nothing else.”
