Chinese forces have surrounded a monastery where a monk died after setting himself on fire, , with one monk saying food, water and power has been cut off.
The Tibetan Buddhist monk killed himself Monday in southwest China as he staged a protest calling for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader condemned by Beijing as a separatist, a group campaigning for Tibetan self-rule said.
"There are at least 1,000 soldiers and police guarding the monastery and about 100 monks inside," one monk told the AFP via telephone.
"The power and water have been cut off for days, and we have no food supplies coming in," the AFP quoted the monk a saying.
It is feared the monk's self-immolation could spark fresh tensions in areas of Sichuan where many ethnically Tibetan people live. Sichuan borders the official Tibet region.
In March, there were protests in Sichuan after a Tibetan monk burned himself to death.
On Monday, the London-based Free Tibet organization said the latest immolation-protest was carried out by a 29-year-old monk, Tsewang Norbu, who was from a monastery in Tawu, about 93 miles from where the last immolation happened.
"Tsewang Norbu drank petrol, sprayed petrol on himself and then set himself on fire," Free Tibet said in a statement, citing an unnamed witness.
"He was heard calling out: 'We Tibetan people want freedom', 'Long live the Dalai Lama' and 'Let the Dalai Lama Return to Tibet'. He is believed to have died at the scene," the group said.
China's official Xinhua news agency also reported the monk's self-immolation, but said "it was unclear why he had burned himself."
The director of Free Tibet, Stephanie Brigden, said in an email Monday that the immolation "exposes how desperate some Tibetans feel."
After the self-immolation in March, she said, Chinese authorities "deployed troops on to the streets, imposed curfews, undertook house searches and set up military round blocks."
Security forces also detained about 300 Tibetan monks for a month, two exiled Tibetans and a prominent writer told Reuters at the time.
Calls for self-rule
Tawu, called Daofu in Chinese, is in a largely ethnic Tibetan part of western Sichuan that many advocates of self-rule say should form part of a larger homeland under Tibetan control.
Calls from Reuters to the government and police bureau in Daofu County went unanswered on Monday evening.
Tensions over the fate of the exiled Dalai Lama and his calls for Tibetan self-determination have continued to dog the region, sometimes flaring into protests.
In March 2008, Tibetan protests led by monks in Lhasa, the regional capital of Tibet proper, were suppressed by police and turned violent. Rioters torched shops and turned on residents, especially Han Chinese, whom many Tibetans see as intruders threatening their culture.
That unrest spilled over into other ethnic Tibetan parts of China, including western Sichuan.
Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama of being a separatist who has abetted violence.
China also rejects accusations of oppression of Tibetans, saying its rule has bought huge benefits to what was a dirt-poor society.
The Nobel Peace prize-winning Dalai Lama denies seeking independence for Tibet, saying he wants a peaceful transition to autonomy for his remote mountain homeland, which the People's Republic of China has ruled since troops marched in 1950.