visit for foreign reporters to Tibet's capital Thursday, an embarrassment for the Chinese government trying to show Lhasa was calm after recent violence. The government had arranged the trip for the reporters to show how peaceful Lhasa was after the deadly riots shattered China's plans for a peaceful run-up to the Beijing Summer Olympics.
The outburst by a group of 30 monks in red robes came as the journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, were being shown around the Jokhang Temple -- one of Tibet's holiest shrines -- by government handlers.
"Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!" yelled one young Buddhist monk, who then started to cry.
They also said their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, had nothing to do with the 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.
"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, referring to the March 14 riots. The Chinese government says 22 people died, while Tibetan exiles say the violence plus a harsh crackdown afterward have left nearly 140 people dead.
The outburst by the monks came amid a morning of stage-managed events. Reporters had already been taken to a Tibet medical clinic that had been attacked nearby the Jokhang, and shown a clothing store 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 but were willing to accept that.
They had rushed over to stop the reporters from being taken into an inner sanctum of the temple, saying they were upset that a government administrator was telling the reporters that Tibet had been part of China for centuries.
They said troops who had been guarding the temple since March 14 were removed the night before the visit by the reporters.
One monk said authorities planted monks in the monastery to talk to the journalists, calling them "not true believers but ... Communist Party members."
"They are all officials, they (the government) arranged for them to come in. And we aren't allowed to go out because they say we could destroy things but we never did anything," another monk said.
The protesting monks appeared to go back to their living quarters. There was no way of immediately knowing what happened to them.
Later in the day, the China-installed vice governor of Tibet said the Jokhang monks had previously been confined to the monastery because some had taken part in the protests. But he promised they would not be punished for their outburst.
"We will never do anything to them. We will never detain any one met on the streets of Lhasa. I don't think any government would do such a thing," Baima Chilin told reporters.
China rarely allows foreign reporters into Tibet under normal circumstances, so the media tour was meant to underscore the communist leadership's determination to contain any damage ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August that was supposed to celebrate China as a modern, rising power.
