Media News - Thursday, March 27, 2008

Monks burst in on Tibet news briefing

Tibetan monks disrupted an official news briefing at a temple in Lhasa on Thursday, shouting that Chinese authorities were lying about unrest in the Himalayan region, foreign reporters said. The incident was an embarrassment to the Chinese government which brought a select group of foreign reporters to Lhasa for a stage-managed tour of the city, where authorities say stability has been restored since violence on March 14. The government has also been saying security forces acted with restraint, in the face of international controversy over the Tibetan unrest and China's response ahead of the Olympics in August. The group of young monks at the Jokhang Temple, one of the most sacred in Tibet and a top tourist stop in central Lhasa, stormed into a briefing by a temple administrator. Hong Kong's TVB aired television footage of the bold outburst in front of the first foreign journalists allowed into Tibet since the violence, showing the monks in crimson robes, some weeping, crowded around cameras. Wang Che-nan, a cameraman for Taiwan's ETTV, said the incident lasted about 15 minutes, after which unarmed police took the monks elsewhere in the temple, away from the journalists. Police and government officials in charge of the media delegation did not confiscate notes or film from reporters but told them to move on. (Reuters)

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