On September 5, 2018, Dorje Rabten, aged about 23 and a monk of Kirti Monastery in Tibet, was arrested by police for staging a public protest in Ngaba (Chinese: Aba) county town, shouting pro-Tibet slogans, according to Kanyag Tsering and Lobsang Yeshe, from the Kirti Monastery in Dharamsala, India. Dorjee Rabten is from Me’uruma township. On September 6, another monk of Kirti Monastery, 18 year-old Tenzin Gelek, staged a similar protest in the county town, calling for freedom in Tibet. He was also immediately arrested and is now in detention. Tenzin Gelek, who is also from Me’uruma, appears to have posted two messages on social media before his protest, and is the author of many other posts under a pseudonym. There was a third protest in September by a monk in the county town, who was arrested, but the details are not yet known.

(Comment: Incidents of one-person protests became a pattern in 2014-5 in the Ngaba, the same area where the wave of self-immolations began in 2009 when Kirti monk Tapey set himself on fire.)