The Chinese government brought a select group of foreign and Chinese reporters to Lhasa on Wednesday (3/26/08) for a STAstage managed three-day tour of the city that was rocked by anti-Chinese violence on March 14 to show that stability had been restored.

The group of monks at the Jokhang Temple, the most sacred temple in Tibet and a top tourist stop in central Lhasa, barged into a briefing by the head of the temple's administrative office.
"About 30 young monks burst into the official briefing, shouting: 'Don't believe them. They are tricking you. They are telling lies',"
Another reporter said some of the monks asserted that they had been unable to leave the Jokhang Temple since March 10.

A third journalist on the trip, Wang Che-nan, a cameraman for Taiwan's ETTV said the incident lasted about 15 minutes, after which unarmed police took the Tibetans to another area of the temple, away from the journalists.
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ANCHOR: Last week, the Chinese authorities invited foreign journalists to Lhasa to interview monks. But during a visit to one of Lhasa's temples, a group of 30 monks stormed the news briefing, accusing the Chinese authorities of lying about recent unrest. Here's the latest.

STORY:
A group of monks had been assigned to talk to the foreign journalists during the staged tour of Lhasa last week. But a group of monks burst out, risking their safety to tell a very different story.

They said the so-called monks approved to talk to press were in fact Chinese officials, and they said the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the Tibetan violence.

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.

[Tibetan Monks]
"Everything is false."

[Tibetan Monks]
"They just don't believe us. They think we will come out and cause havoc -- smash, destroy, rob, burn. We didn't do anything like that -- they're falsely accusing us."

[Tibetan Monks]
"We want freedom. They detained Lamas and normal people. It's all cheating. The prayers are all government officers. It's all cheating. They treat us badly."

Taiwan's ETTV said the incident lasted about 15 minutes, after which Chinese police took the monks elsewhere in the temple, away from the journalists. The monks said they had been trapped inside the temple since the March 10.

The incident was an embarrassment to the Chinese regime, which brought a select group of foreign reporters to Lhasa for a stage-managed tour of the city, where authorities claim stability has been restored since violence broke out on March 14. The monks made it clear that such claims are false.

Over the weekend, Communist Party officials declared that the group of monks would not be punished for the outbreak. But that promise may last only as long as Tibet remains hot in the public eye.