Armored troop carriers and tour buses packed with police roll along the winding mountain roads. Internet service is dead in some places. Military camps fortified with sandbags sit amid Tibetan communities, where strings of prayer flags flutter in the wind.
Fifty years after a failed uprising sent the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile, China is mounting a show of force to try to prevent a repeat of last years sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule. Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the March 10, 1959, revolt.
Last year, a commemorative march by monks in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, was blocked by police. That set off protests, which erupted in an anti-Chinese riot on March 14 and then spread to dozens of Tibetan communities, embarrassing China before the Beijing Olympics. In the year since, a kind of martial law has prevailed.
In Daofu, a town in Sichuan province where Buddhist mantras are carved into the sides of 13,000-foot (4,300-meter) mountains, monasteries are closed to visitors, their monks inside reading prayers, local officials said. Police cars patrol the streets.
``There have been thousands of police and troops here since the Lhasa riots last year. It has affected our lives, said one resident, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals by local authorities. ``Food is more expensive and harder to buy because the soldiers are eating a lot. Amnesty International said Friday the region has been subjected to ``a year of escalating human rights violations. The International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based group, says it has identified more than 600 people detained in the past year, and though some have been released, it says most are still in detention.
The Tibetan government-in-exile in India says 220 Tibetans died and nearly 7,000 were initially detained in last years demonstrations. Beijing has not released an overall death toll, but says 22 died in Lhasa, most of them Chinese civilians.
China blames the Dalai Lama and his exile movement for fomenting the unrest to restore a Buddhist theocracy that communist rule overturned. Despite the Dalai Lamas repeated insistence he wants autonomy for Tibetans and not independence, the government on Saturday renewed its criticisms that hes a secessionist. ``Our differences with him are not over religious issues, human rights, democracy or culture, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters in Beijing. ``It is about whether we should defend Chinas unity and prevent Tibet from being separated from Chinas territory.