It was canceled again this summer, after people in the area and in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, protested the death of another prominent Tibetan political prisoner, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, 65. Mr. Tenzin Delek, who was from the Litang area and was one of the most prominent Tibetan religious leaders in prison, died last month under mysterious circumstances while serving a life sentence for “terrorism and inciting separatism.” He was arrested in 2002.

The authorities quickly cremated Mr. Tenzin Delek’s body rather than turn it over to relatives to perform traditional Buddhist funeral rites. Security officials also detained a sister and a niece of the deceased rinpoche, according to Students for a Free Tibet, which is based overseas. The group said Saturday that the two women were released late Thursday.

China’s security clampdown in the vast Tibetan areas increased greatly after the 2008 unrest and has continued at a severe level since then. The intervening years have seen more than 140 self-immolations by Tibetans, most of them intended as protests against what most Tibetans call the occupation of their homeland.

Though the Litang Horse Festival has not been held since 2007, a few similar events are held on the Tibetan plateau with official approval. One, a three-day horse festival organized by the local government of the Tibetan area of Gyegudo, known in Chinese as Yushu, ended Monday. Officials said the festival in Gyegudo, which has been rebuilt since a 2010 earthquake, had been put on to show the outside world the culture of Kham, the region of eastern Tibet that includes Litang.

Days before the festival, a young monk, Sonam Topgyal, set himself on fire in the middle of Gyegudo.

At the last Litang Horse Festival, in 2007, Mr. Runggye Adak, the former nomad, said in a speech to a large crowd that the Dalai Lama was the one person Tibetans truly needed. He also said that “although we can move our bodies, we cannot express what is in our hearts,” according to a translation by the International Campaign for Tibet. Chinese officials generally do not tolerate public displays of the Dalai Lama’s picture, let alone speeches calling for his return.