BEIJING—Two dozen Tibetans have set themselves on fire in western China this month in a dramatic acceleration of the protests against authoritarian Chinese rule, activist groups say.

The surge in self-immolations, along with an increase in large demonstrations, marks a new phase in the Tibetan protests.

At least 86 people have set themselves on fire since the immolations began in 2009. In a change in recent months, most self-immolators now are lay people rather than Buddhist monks and nuns, who can be more closely watched by the authorities.

The protests have also sought to avoid direct attacks on authorities and government property, acts which in the past the authorities could label as riots or terrorism, providing an excuse for greater oppression. Despite the altered approach, observers see little short-term possibility of Beijing changing its policies on Tibet.

“The problem will just escalate over time. The government shows no inclination to respond positively to recommendations for reform,” said University of Hong Kong law professor Michael Davis, an expert on Tibet.

In the latest immolation, 24-year-old Kalsang Kyab doused himself with kerosene and set himself alight Tuesday in front of local government offices in Kyangtsa in Aba prefecture, a hotbed of unrest, according to London-based Free Tibet and other groups.

An official in Aba said Wednesday he was aware of the immolations but refused to give any details.

On Monday, about 1,000 students at the Tsolho Medical Institute staged a bold protest about 900 kilometres to the north in Qinghai province. Riot police fired shots into the air and released tear gas and beat the students with rifle butts, sending 20 students to the hospital, some with serious injuries, Free Tibet reported.

Tibetan and surrounding ethnically Tibetan regions have been closed off to most outsiders, and firsthand information from the area is extremely difficult to obtain.

Driving the students to protest was a booklet distributed by authorities that derided the Tibetan language as irrelevant, attacked the exiled Dalai Lama and condemned immolation protests as “acts of stupidity.”

The booklet is the latest in a series of perceived slights and intrusive measures by Chinese authorities that have left Tibetans feeling that the culture, language and Buddhist religion at the core of their identity are under threat.

The combination of immolations and large-scale protests is posing a new challenge for security forces, which have been stationed in large numbers in Tibetan areas in recent years.

Though protests have flared periodically over the decades, tensions boiled over in 2008, when deadly rioting broke out in the capital, Lhasa, and sparked an uprising across large swaths of ethnically Tibetan areas. Since then, security — already tight — has been smothering.

Many Tibetans see the immolations as selfless acts of sacrifice, making it hard for authorities to denounce the immolators. Similarly, protests by students are hard to demonize since they are typically non-violent and centred on issues such as language rights, which are guaranteed under the Chinese constitution.

While local authorities have cracked down hard, authorities in Beijing have said relatively little other than to issue routine denunciations of the Dalai Lama and his followers.

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That indicates they are uncertain how to respond in a way that would bolster their authority and prevent the acts of defiance snowballing into a full-blown protest movement, said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at New York’s Columbia University.

“This suggests that the Tibetans have found a way of at least getting under the skin of the authorities,” he said.

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