Tibetan monastery a 'virtual prison'

The exiled head of a restive Tibetan monastery said it had turned into a "virtual prison," a rights group said Wednesday, amid conflicting reports over the fate of two monks who set themselves alight there.

The International Campaign for Tibet said the two monks who set themselves on fire at the Kirti monastery in southwestern China on Friday had died, citing exiled Tibetan sources, but a local official said they were still alive.

The ICT quoted the exiled head of the monastery -- who now lives in India's Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based -- as saying the lives of people in the area had become so intolerable they were choosing to die.

"With the Chinese government making arbitrary arrests and passing unimaginably harsh sentences on the basis of false representations and allegations, for month after month, (the monastery) has been turned into a virtual prison," the Kirti Rinpoche said. Full story...

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