BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- No local residents, monks or nuns in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region have self-immolated, a senior Tibetan official said on Sunday.
"None of the 46,000 monks and nuns in Tibet's 1,700-plus monasteries, nor any local residents, have self-immolated since similar events were plotted by the Dalai Lama clique," Padma Choling, chairman of the Standing Committee of the regional People's Congress, told reporters after a panel discussion at the ongoing annual session of China's top legislature in Beijing.
He was answering a question related to self-immolation in Tibet raised by a Hong Kong journalist.
His remarks came after a string of self-immolations were reported in neighboring Tibetan-inhabited regions almost a year ago.
Tibetan authorities have insisted that self-immolations were criminal acts premeditated, plotted and manipulated by overseas separatist forces.