From Times Online
Tibetan monks staged a daring protest against Chinese rule, disrupted an official government tour for foreign journalists with screams that the Dalai Lama was not to blame for violence and demands for religious freedom.
The astonishing outburst by about 30 monks came as the first group of journalists to visit Lhasa since the violent March 14 riot was being shown around the Jokhang temple, the holiest shrine in the Tibetan canon.
An Associated Press reporter, Charles Hutzler, described one young Buddhist monk who yelled “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” and then burst into tears.
He described how the monks 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 journalists that Tibet had been part of China for centuries.
About 30 monks, speaking first in Tibetan and then in Mandarin Chinese so that the reporters could understand them, said they knew that they almost certainly faced arrest for their action but that they were willing to take the risk.
One monk said: “They want us to crush the Dalai Lama and that is not right.”
China has renewed its vilification campaign of Tibet’s exiled temporal leader, accusing him of orchestrating the riot when hundreds of Tibetans rampaged through the streets of Lhasa in a frenzy of ethnic violence, stabbing and beating ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to Chinese shops and offices. Click to read more http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3630653.ece
The astonishing outburst by about 30 monks came as the first group of journalists to visit Lhasa since the violent March 14 riot was being shown around the Jokhang temple, the holiest shrine in the Tibetan canon.
An Associated Press reporter, Charles Hutzler, described one young Buddhist monk who yelled “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” and then burst into tears.
He described how the monks 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 journalists that Tibet had been part of China for centuries.About 30 monks, speaking first in Tibetan and then in Mandarin Chinese so that the reporters could understand them, said they knew that they almost certainly faced arrest for their action but that they were willing to take the risk.
One monk said: “They want us to crush the Dalai Lama and that is not right.”
China has renewed its vilification campaign of Tibet’s exiled temporal leader, accusing him of orchestrating the riot when hundreds of Tibetans rampaged through the streets of Lhasa in a frenzy of ethnic violence, stabbing and beating ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to Chinese shops and offices. Click to read more http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3630653.ece
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