Ashwini Bhatia/Associated Press
Tibetan Buddhist monks in Dharmsala, India, prayed Sunday for the Tibetan man Shichung.
Published: September 29, 2013
BEIJING — A Tibetan man in China’s western Sichuan Province died on Saturday after setting himself on fire to protest Chinese policies in the region, according to Tibetan exile groups and Radio Free Asia, a news service financed by the United States government.
The man, Shichung, was the first person to carry out a self-immolation protest in Tibetan areas in more than two months and the 122nd person to do so since the gruesome campaign of suicides began in 2009.
Shichung, 41, who like many Tibetans uses only one name, was from Aba, a heavily Tibetan county that has been the scene of several self-immolations and antigovernment protests. The authorities have responded to the unrest by flooding the area with paramilitary police officers and closely monitoring Buddhist monasteries.
A few days before his death, Shichung had complained to friends about such heavy-handed policies, saying, “It seems they won’t leave us in peace,” the group Free Tibet reported, citing local sources.
On Saturday afternoon, shortly after returning home from a religious festival in a nearby village, he set himself on fire and then ran to the road, where he collapsed and died, according to Radio Free Asia and Tibet Watch, a research group registered in Britain.
The reports said Shichung, who was described as a part-time tailor and farmer, had a wife and two teenage daughters.
A version of this article appears in print on September 30, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Tibetan Dies After Setting Himself on Fire.
