Ngawa County


Ngawa County, or Aba or Ngaba, is a county in the northwest of Sichuan Province, China. It is under the administration of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. It is located in the remote northwestern part of the prefecture, on the border with Qinghai and Gansu. The county seat is Ngawa Town.

Self-immolation incident

On 16 March 2011 a 20-year-old Tibetan monk called Phuntsok set fire to himself at a market, in protest against allegedly repressive government policies in Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan populated areas in China. He died in hospital early in the morning of 17 March. Following Phuntsok's self-immolation, hundreds of monks from the same monastery, Kirti monastery in Ngaba County, and other local residents staged another protest.

Climate

Footnotes