Inciting people to self-immolate is a "crime of murder" in accordance with Chinese law, a high-ranking Tibetan official said here Friday.

Losang Gyaltsen, vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, made the remarks on the sideline of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Beijing.

"Life is precious. Sacrificing people's lives to achieve ulterior political goals goes against the conscience and morality of human being, and should be strongly condemned," Losang Gyaltsen, a delegate to the CPC congress, said.

A string of self-immolations have occurred in ethnic Tibetan areas in recent months.

Li Changping, also a delegate to the CPC congress and a Tibetan official from southwest China's Sichuan Province, said the 14th Dalai Lama should be blamed for those incidents.

"It is the 14th Dalai Lama that should answer your question about the reason of the self-immolations, because he is the plotter of those incidents," Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee, said when taking questions from the press.