CCTV blames Dalai Lama, foreign media for instigating self-immolations
Chinese national television aired a lengthy prime time news feature blaming the Tibetan government-in-exile and foreign media for self-immolations in the country's Tibetan-populated areas.
"Only after I watched Voice of America, I want to do it," a bashful, young Tibetan man says, speaking of his failed attempt to kill himself by setting himself on fire. "At first, I thought I was a hero, now I am no hero; I'm an idiot."
At least 116 Tibetans have killed themselves in such acts of defiance against Chinese rule since 2009, according to overseas media reports.
The manual is allegedly distributed online, by travellers and by monks who clandestinely enter China. The TV production portrays self-immolators as young, naive and either desperately poor or with a criminal background.
The report also accuses foreign media of perpetuating the symbolic suicides. "By continuing to speculate about immolations, Radio Free Asia and other foreign media participate in their propagation in Tibetan areas," it claims.
To back up its claims, it - somewhat bizarrely - quotes a German language lecturer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
"It's a problem of the Western media and it's a problem of the interests of the exiled Tibetans who ... it's a fact, the more trouble there is in Tibet, the more money they get," says Otto Kölbl.
"The Chinese have been cracking down on domestic monastic communities. Now the Communist party decides who can be a monk or not, and that seems to cause some monks to commit self-immolation," he said.
"The largest number of self-immolations took place during the Party Congress in November - they wanted to send an urgent message to the Chinese leadership," he said.
The CCTV report is scheduled to be aired internationally by the state broadcaster in English and four other languages.