Indian police detain a Tibetan during a protest outside visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao's hotel in Mumbai November 23, 2006.
REUTERS/ARKO DATTA
(Adds more protests) By Krittivas Mukherjee MUMBAI, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A Tibetan protester set himself on fire on Thursday outside visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao's hotel in Mumbai before being taken away by Indian police. The protester -- who said his name was Lhakpa -- poured kerosene on himself and set it alight shouting "Free Tibet" and "Hu is a killer" as police tried to douse the flames. Lhakpa, who sustained burns to his legs, was among a dozen Tibetans demonstrating outside Hu's heavily guarded hotel overlooking the Arabian sea. Hu was inside the hotel at the time, preparing to address a meeting of business leaders on the last day of his four-day India visit aimed at boosting political and economic ties. Protesters wearing T-shirts saying "China get out of Tibet" and "Chinese - cheap quality, cheap friends", jostled with police before being bundled away to a nearby police station. Elsewhere, about 200 Tibetans and their Indian supporters protested at another location close to Hu's hotel to protest against what they called "the massacre of innocent Tibetans" fleeing their homeland. In September, a team of European mountaineers filmed Chinese soldiers shooting at a group of 75 Tibetans and killing at least one of them as they fled across a snowy Himalayan mountain pass into Nepal on their way to India. Tibetan rights groups say another person died in hospital later and 32 people from that group -- mostly children -- went missing after the incident, which took place at a height of 5,700 metres (18,700 feet). BEIJING'S WARNING China has said the border guards warned the group and then fired in self-defence when the Tibetans attacked them. The video showed no such confrontation. "It was murder in cold blood. How can the world let China continue doing this?" asked C.A. Kallianpur, coordinator of a Tibetan support group. Police also removed small groups of Tibetans who waved the Tibetan flag and shouted anti-China slogans at various points along the route Hu took to the airport. Hundreds of Tibetans living in exile in India have been demonstrating in New Delhi and other cities across the country against what they say is China's illegal occupation of Tibet. Tibetan representatives say more than 50 protesters have been detained by police since Monday for trying to breach security to get close to Hu. Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950 and over the decades Beijing sought to impose its stamp on Tibetan society, closing monasteries and restricting religious life. China's Foreign Ministry would not comment directly on the latest protest and instead warned other countries not to make Tibet an issue. "Tibet's affairs are an internal affair of China," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing when asked about the incident. "We oppose any country using the Tibet issue to meddle in domestic Chinese matters." India recognises Tibet as part of China but gives asylum to around 120,000 Tibetans including the Tibetan government-in-exile and Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama based in the northern town of Dharamsala. (Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing)
