An Indian policeman stands guard on a patio overlooking a courtyard of Rumtek Monastry
© AFP Diptendu Dutta CHENGDU, China (AFP) - "Foreign tourists cannot come into Lhasa. The permits have been suspended. Some people who arrived yesterday were turned back," private tour organizer Wu Yongzhe said by telephone from Lhasa.
Two tour organizers based in this southwestern Chinese city, which is a hub for travelers to Tibet, also confirmed the region had been closed to foreigners.
The owner of a popular guest house in Chengdu, which organizes group permits for foreign backpackers, said the government stopped issuing permits for Tibet on Friday.
"I cannot arrange for foreign tourists to go to Tibet," she said.
"I had one group who had their permits and flew out yesterday and they were forced to stay at a hotel near an airport (on the outskirts of Lhasa). They were not allowed to go into Lhasa."
She said the group was due to return to Chengdu on Saturday.
At a Chengdu hotel, a group of about a dozen tourists were making new travel plans on Saturday after their trip to Lhasa was abruptly canceled.
The group, traveling with California tour company Third Eye, had originally planned to fly to Lhasa early on Saturday, said the American tour leader.
"We were told that the permits had been suspended," she said.
The suspension came after a week of peaceful protests in Lhasa erupted on Friday into widespread rioting, prompting a massive show of force by Chinese security forces.
Ten people were killed in the unrest, according to China's official Xinhua news agency, which was the biggest and most deadly protest against Chinese rule of Tibet since 1989.
Jose Miguel Allende, from Chile, said from Chengdu airport on Saturday that he and two friends flew into Lhasa airport on Friday but authorities would not let them go into the city.
They instead forced his group and other travellers to stay in a hotel on the outskirts of Lhasa, and then to fly back to Chengdu on Saturday morning.
"They were not allowing anyone in (to Lhasa)," Allende said, adding that even on the outskirts of town there were signs of tension.
"There was a lot of government cars on the road, large land cruisers with police escorts and sirens," he said.
China sent troops into Tibet in 1950 to "liberate" the remote Himalayan region and formally annexed it a year later. In March 1959, an attempted uprising was quelled by the Chinese and the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, fled into exile.
The Tibetan population largely remains resentful of what it says is repressive Chinese rule.
Due to political sensitivity in the region, foreigners require permits to travel into Tibet, though not for travel elsewhere in China.
©AFP