Free Republic

A Tibetan Buddhist monk burned himself to death in western China on Wednesday, triggering a street protest against government controls on the restive region, a group campaigning for Tibetan self-rule said. The self-immolation appeared to be a small repeat of protests that gripped Tibetan areas of China in March 2008, when Buddhist monks and other Tibetan people loyal to the exiled Dalai Lama, their traditional religious leader, confronted police and troops. The 21-year-old, named Phuntsog, was a monk in Aba, a mainly ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province that erupted in defiance against Chinese control three years ago. The monk...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Buddhist monk was hacked to death Thursday while begging for food, an attack the police chief said was aimed at inciting religious unrest in the Muslim-dominated south. Thailand's southernmost provinces have been tense since Jan. 4 when suspected Muslim separatists torched 21 government-run schools and raided an army camp in Narathiwat province, killing four soldiers and stealing hundreds of rifles. The monk was collecting food from followers in Narathiwat's Bachor district when an unidentified man approached him on a motorcycle and chopped him to death with a machete, national police chief Gen. Sant Sarutanond said. Walking...