Tibetan protester sets himself alight in New Delhi
A Tibetan exile set himself on fire on Monday during a rally in New Delhi to protest against an upcoming visit to India by Chinese President Hu Jintao, police said.
The 27-year-old, identified by fellow protesters as Janphel Yeshi, set himself ablaze in Jantar Mantar, a city centre venue for public rallies and demonstrations.
"We rushed him to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital in a badly-injured condition," police officer Sukhdev Singh Mann, who was at the scene, told agencies.
Fellow protester Tsewang Dolma told agencies by telephone that Yeshi, who fled his homeland in 2005, was burnt on almost all of his body.
"He is in a very bad condition and hospital doctors are saying he is 98 percent burned," Dolma said.
Yeshi ran down the street covered in flames before collapsing to the ground as fellow demonstrators tried to beat out the flames, according to witnesses.
Since the start of 2011, a total of 29 Tibetans, many of them Buddhist monks and nuns, are reported to have set themselves on fire in Tibetan-inhabited areas of China to protest against Chinese rule.
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