Tibetan activists voiced concern yesterday over possible Chinese government retaliation against Buddhist monks who disrupted a stage-managed media tour of the riot-torn region's capital, Lhasa.
Dozens of red-robed monks had pushed into a briefing being given by officials at the Jokhang Temple on Thursday, complaining of a lack of religious freedom and denouncing official claims that the Dalai Lama had orchestrated the March 14 violence.
The outburst was the only spontaneous moment on Thursday in an otherwise tightly controlled government trip to the Tibetan capital. China has strenuously argued that the widespread arson and looting was a criminal act orchestrated by separatists, while refusing to discuss the root causes of the anger and alienation blamed for sparking the violence.
The protest and resulting harsh security crackdown has further focussed international attention on China's human rights record ahead of the Olympics.
"There are serious fears for the welfare and whereabouts" of the monks, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement.
"The monks' peaceful protest shattered the authorities' plans to convey an image that the situation in Lhasa was under control after recent demonstrations and rioting," it said.
Thursday's protest lasted for about 15 minutes before government officials ended it and told the journalists it was "time to go."
"What the government is saying is not true," one monk shouted out.
"They killed many people. They killed many people," another monk said, referring to Chinese security forces.
The reporters from foreign media outlets were escorted by Chinese authorities on a three-day visit to Lhasa that was to end yesterday. Other than the incident at the Jokhang Temple, one of Tibetan Buddhism's holiest shrines, most of the second day of the tour went according to plan, with officials sticking to the government line that the most violent anti-Chinese protests in nearly two decades were plotted by supporters of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader.
The government says at least 22 people have died in Lhasa; Tibetan rights groups say nearly 140 Tibetans were killed, including 19 in Gansu Province.
One of the monks protesting on Thursday said the death toll was far higher than the government was saying.
"The cadres and the army killed more than 100 Tibetans. They arrested more than a thousand," he said.
Fu Jun, head of the News Affairs Office of the Propaganda Department of the Tibet Communist Party, said yesterday that the monks were spreading rumors.
"We are keeping an open mind about their complaints. The rumor is misleading the media without a shred of evidence ... We will clear up facts in a few days time when appropriate," Fu said.
The Chinese-installed vice governor of Tibet, Baima Chilin, told the reporters late on Thursday that the monks would not be punished for their outburst.
"We will never do anything to them. We will never detain anyone you met on the streets of Lhasa. I don't think any government would do such a thing," he said.
Chinese state-run TV, which has widely covered the foreign journalists' tour, showed the Jokhang visit on its evening newscast, but not the monks' outburst.
All monasteries in Lhasa remained closed yesterday, a separate government official said, amid reports that monks had been held inside for two weeks.
"None of the monasteries in Lhasa are open ... it's hard to say when they will reopen. This issue is beyond our powers," an official with the Lhasa Tourism Administration, who declined to be named, said by phone.
In related news, about a dozen pro-Tibet protesters jumped the walls of a building housing the offices of the UN in Nepal yesterday, seeking UN intervention in Tibet.
Tibetans living in Nepal have been protesting almost every day since the trouble began in Lhasa and hundreds, including nuns and monks, were detained to break up their march to the UN offices.
On Friday, about a dozen Tibetan students carrying placards quietly scaled the walls of the UN complex and began protesting.
"They are sitting inside with their placards," a witness said from inside the compound in an upmarket area of Kathmandu.
Also see: Hunger strike supports Tibetans
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