"These 50 years have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet". Lamenting that Tibetan culture and identity were "nearing extinction", he said "even today Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear ... regarded like criminals, deserving to be put to death".

Tibet's government-in-exile says that more than 80,000 people died between March and October of 1959 alone and that at least 200 more were killed last year when Chinese security forces clamped down on protests marking the anniversary.

Daofu, China: Military convoys rumble along winding mountain roads, the Internet has been cut in potential trouble spots and motorists must run a gantlet of inspection checkpoints as Beijing mounts a show of force in Tibetan areas to prevent a repeat of uprisings against Chinese rule.

A volatile period begins Tuesday, the 50th anniversary of a failed revolt that sent the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile.

A year ago, Tibetans erupted in protest — sometimes violently. Today, checkpoints and garrisons seem as numerous as the fortress-like Buddhist monasteries and white-domed shrines that dot the steep slopes and pastures of western China bordering Tibet. The result is a kind of martial law, with constant tension across a third of Beijing's territory.

Authorities have purged monasteries of suspected agitators and enforced denunciation campaigns of the Dalai Lama.

Rumors that the spiritual leader would be kidnapped by Chinese authorities touched off the uprising in Lhasa on March 10, 1959, nine years after the communist army marched into the Tibetan regional capital.

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.

What is happening in Tibetan areas has become increasingly difficult to verify. Internet and mobile phone text-messaging services — some of the ways that protesters organized and kept abreast of developments last year — have been suspended for the past two weeks or so in Aba and Ganzi, two areas in Sichuan where violent protests broke out last year.

LONDON (AFP) — Five pro-Tibet protesters were arrested on Sunday after they tried to charge towards Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's motorcade as he visited the Chinese embassy in London, police said.

A police spokesman said five men were arrested for "breaching the peace."

Wen, on the second day of the final stop of his European tour, was greeted by around 200 noisy pro-Tibet protesters and a rival pro-China demonstration of 100 people facing each other outside the embassy.

The protesters waved placards reading, "Wen Jiabao, Tibetan Blood on Your Hands."

Satellite images show the clear atrocities carried out by the Chinese Military and police in Tibet. More than 500 Tibetan protestors are dead and more than 10,000 are injured.

China's official Xinhua News Agency claims only 10 people are dead. The protests by Buddhist monks in Tibet turned violent, with shops and vehicles set on fire and gunshots fired on the streets of the region's capital, Lhasa.

Most historians agree Tibet's assimilation into China was established during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). In China's view, the relationship continued throughout the next two dynasties, the Ming and the Qing.

But the nature of the relationship varied over the centuries depending on the relative strength or weakness of China's imperial government. The Qing dynasty (1644-1911) emperors were especially weak towards the end of their reign, when British and other foreign forces began making inroads.

The 13th Dalai Lama expelled Chinese troops stationed in Lhasa in the chaos following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. He declared independence in 1912, and Tibet largely ruled itself until 1950, when China struggled with foreign invasion and civil wars.

In support of Tibet's claim to independence during this period, scholars note it had its own foreign affairs bureau, remained neutral during World War II and issued passports.

But neither China nor any major Western power recognised it as independent and China's government refused to accept the border between British India and Tibet drawn up at the 1913-14 Simla Conference.

The current Dalai Lama, the 14th, was discovered in 1937 as a two-year-old in a village in Amdo, now a part of China's western province of Qinghai.

China says it sent People's Liberation Army troops to Tibet in 1950 to liberate Tibetan "serfs" and after local leaders refused to negotiate the region's "peaceful liberation".

Under the 17-point Agreement of 1951, China pledged to keep Tibet's traditional government and religion in place. But Communist land reform and collectivisation left the region in turmoil, and in 1959 the Dalai Lama led an uprising against Chinese rule, despite his initial support for the 1951 accord.

In 1979, the Dalai Lama, who had by then established a government-in-exile in India, abandoned claims of independence in favour of a "middle way" approach that advocates political autonomy for Tibet under Beijing's rule. Beijing dismisses the "middle way" as a sham and says the Dalai Lama has not truly abandoned independence.