Chinese paramilitary units are now posted on every block of the town of Ngaba, and Kirti is under lockdown. Journalists are barred from entering the monastery, which has made the question of how Kirti became the volcanic heart of this eruption of self-immolations something of a mystery.

But monks and laypeople from Ngaba who have fled across the Himalayas to this Indian hill town said that Kirti had been radicalized in the last four years by an occupation of the monastery that amounted to one of the harshest crackdowns in Tibet. Chinese security measures have converted the white-walled monastery, with its temples and dormitories and rows of prayer wheels, into a de facto prison, which has fueled the anger that the measures are aimed at containing.

After a five-week lull, the self-immolations picked up again last week. On May 27, two men in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, set fire to themselves outside the Jokhang Temple, the holiest in Tibetan Buddhism. It was the first notable act of protest in Lhasa in four years. One of the men was a former Kirti monk.

On Wednesday, a mother of three burned herself to death in Ngaba, known as Aba in Chinese.

The Ngaba exiles here say the security measures imposed on the town and the monastery have been extreme, even by the standards of Chinese control in Tibet. In 2008, during a Tibet-wide uprising, security forces shot protesters in Ngaba with live ammunition, killing at least 10 civilians, including one monk, according to reports by advocacy groups and photographs of corpses that had been brought to Kirti. It was one of the most violent events of the uprising, and anger and alienation set in among local Tibetans. Officials tightened security.

In February 2009, in the town’s market area, a young man from Kirti self-immolated, the first monk to do so in modern Tibetan history. The monk, named Tapey, survived, and officials stepped up surveillance of Kirti. In March 2011, the next self-immolation occurred: Phuntsog, 20, set fire to himself on the same street in the market, which locals now call Hero’s Road.