LHASA, China — A group of monks disrupted a government-managed tour by foreign reporters to Tibet’s capital today, screaming there was no religious freedom and that the Dalai Lama was not to blame for recent violence there.
The outburst by about 30 monks came as the journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, were being shown around the sacred Jokhang Temple by government handlers in Lhasa.
“Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” yelled one young Buddhist monk, who then started crying.
They also said their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, had nothing to do with recent anti-government riots by Tibetans in Lhasa, where buildings were torched and looted and ethnic Han Chinese were attacked.
The government has said the March 14 riots were masterminded by “the Dalai clique,” Beijing’s term for the Dalai Lama and his supporters.
Government handlers shouted for the journalists to leave and tried to pull them away during the protest.
The government had arranged the trip for the reporters to show how calm Lhasa was after the deadly riots shattered China’s plans for a peaceful run-up to the Beijing Summer Olympics.
“They want us to crush the Dalai Lama, and that is not right,” one monk said during the 15-minute outburst.
“This had nothing to do with the Dalai Lama,” said another.
The Chinese government says 22 people died in the Lhasa riots, while Tibetan exiles say the violence plus the harsh crackdown afterward have left nearly 140 dead.
The monks’ outburst came amid a morning of stage-managed events. Reporters already had been taken to a Tibet medical clinic that had been attacked near the Jokhang and shown clothing stores where five girls had been trapped and burned to death.
The monks, who first spoke Tibetan and then switched to Mandarin so the reporters could understand them, said they knew they would probably be arrested for their actions.
On Wednesday, the first day of the visit, police presence was visible but not overbearing in the newly built-up and heavily Chinese portions of Lhasa. Teams of security forces stood in the lanes near the Jokhang.
Two Tibetan teachers drinking in a nearby bar said they were enjoying a first night out after nighttime curfews kept them at home eating mainly tsampa — roasted barley — since the day after the March 14 riot. One reason the curfew was loosened, they said, was the foreign media visit.
An acrid odor hung in the blocks near the old city where rows of burned-out buildings stand as evidence of the violence.
