Chinese Relentlessly Patrol A Subdued but Jittery Lhasa

China's government-controlled press has reported that tourism is resuming in Tibet, publishing pictures of smiling Chinese getting off airplanes and trains. In fact, although Potala Palace has reopened for tours, Jokhang and the other major temples have remained closed, with armed guards preventing monks from leaving. Streets around such traditional tourist sites seemed quiet over the weekend, and a local tourist hostel had only two customers.

A Han Chinese who runs a noodle shop near the Jokhang Temple voiced fears that the situation might not improve for some time. He reopened his restaurant recently, he said, but so far has attracted few customers. "Sometimes, we just cook for ourselves," he joked.

One of the hostel customers said she had made friends on the Internet with a soldier stationed here as part of the security forces and later met him in person. Many soldiers on duty in Tibet strike up such online friendships, she said, since there is little else for them to do in their leisure time.

Since the rioting, the Beijing government has conducted one tour to Lhasa for several dozen journalists and another for a party of diplomats. Both were supervised by officials and limited in their movements.

Otherwise, the Tibet Autonomous Region has been placed off-limits to foreigners. Plans to reopen May 1 were canceled without explanation. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games has not said whether correspondents will be allowed to cover what was envisioned as a festive leg of the torch relay from Mount Everest to Lhasa.

As a result, most reporting from the region has been limited to assurances from government officials that all is returning to normal. An outbreak of new protests by monks at Lhasa's Drepung Monastery on Thursday, for instance, was reported by foreign human rights activists and residents here but was neither confirmed nor denied by the Chinese government.

Instead, the Communist Party's Propaganda Bureau has mounted a campaign apparently designed to link Tibet's independence advocates to terrorism sponsored by al-Qaeda. The official New China News Agency said recently that the Tibetan Youth Congress, which is part of the Dalai Lama's exile organization, has advocated terrorist tactics and forged links with Islamic separatists trained by al-Qaeda in the far western Xingjiang region.

President Hu Jintao, the Communist Party leader, also indicated that a hard line had been decided on by party propagandists in remarks Saturday to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia. In a meeting with Rudd, Hu said the issue in Tibet is not human rights or cultural diversity, as presented in the West, but whether "to safeguard national unification or split the motherland."

The bloodshed last month has apparently left many of Tibet's Buddhist monks with a similarly hard attitude. The tourist from Shenzhen said she had pressed a Chinese soldier to allow entry to the Jokhang Monastery. He replied: "If you want to stay alive, you better not go in there."

But among Tibetans who have benefited from the region's swift economic progress over the last several decades, sentiments were sharply different. A 23-year-old tourist car operator said the monks' protests were futile and served mostly to slow business. A Buddhist, he also criticized the violence as a violation of religious beliefs.

"I think monks should not be doing things like that," he said.

But in some ways, a Han Chinese businessman and army veteran said, Tibetan anger is understandable. Even though Chinese rule has brought considerable material improvement to the region since Beijing took over in 1951, he said, Tibetans still consider the Han Chinese who come to run the government and open businesses as outsiders.

"Tibet is their home, and we outsiders come in and take over," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Of course, they are not happy about that. It's like an outsider who would come and make your home nice for you, fix it up and make it nice, but he's still an outsider."

Correspondent Edward Cody in Beijing contributed to this report.