By Ruth Youngblood

BEIJING, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Chinese troops resorted to harsh measures to prevent hostile Tibetans and delegates to the U.N. World Conference on Women from attending Friday's festivities marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Bus service was curtailed in the capital Lhasa. Monks and nuns were barred entry to the city and only those Tibetans issued special photo identification cards were allowed to attend the preliminary events, Tibetan sources reported.

"This is a trajic anniversary," said Lodi Gyari, president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, one of several groups denied visas to attend the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum underway in the Beijing suburb of Huairou or the conference starting in capital Sept. 4.

The commemoration in Tibet "adds insult to injury for the Tibetan people," Lodi said, "serving as a fresh reminder that their homeland is a Chinese colony and they are second-class citizens."

A 70-member delegation led by Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo arrived from Beijing including officials with the Communist Party's Central Committee, the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the cabinet-level State Council and the People's Liberation Army.

While the Xinhua news agency reported "Tibetans have truly become masters of their destiny because they now have the major say in managing the region's affairs," a representative of the human rights group said a wave of arrests, increased surveillance and new travel restrictions have swept Lhasa.

"In what several Tibetans describe as the toughest clamp down in years, Chinese troops and police were deployed in force" around the capital and army helicopters hovered above in the run-up to the anniversary, the organization said.

Residents told of scores of arrests of Tibetans at night suspected of harboring pro-independence sentiments. A Buddhist monk identified as Bado Losang Lekstok was arrested for chanting independence slogans in front of the Jokhang Cathedral, Tibet's holiest temple.

Only those who authorities believe will not create disturbances were issued the anniversary IDs.

Gyaincain Norbu, the Beijing-appointed chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, blamed supporters of the exiled dalai lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists, for attempting to incite the 2 million Tibetans against the Communist Party and government.

"They are actually the tools of hostile western forces," he told Xinhua. "The dalai lama clique" is determined"to overthrow the government and "split the motherland so that they can restore their reactionary rule in Tibet," Norbu said.

Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1959 and crushed an uprising nine years later, forcing the dalai lama into exile in northern India. Premier Zhou Enlai dissolved the government March 28, 1959, and the PLA re-established military rule.

On Sept. 1, 1965 the initial session of the First People's Congress was convened in Lhasa and promptly declared Tibet an autonous regional administration.

In the drive to keep thousands of NGO and conference delegates from 185 countries out during the anniversary activities that continue through Sept. 10, Chinese authorities threatened travel companies with closure for one month if they sold flights or services to Tibet to foreigners with a conference visa in their passports.

In Huairou, police stormed a hotel meeting room Thursday after a Tibetan delegation showed a film accusing China of targeting Tibetan women for forced sterilizations and abortions.

Members of the Tibet Women's Association said they refused to turn over the film to a plainclothes police officer, and he departed.

Chinese Tibetans in their tent at the forum diligently followed the official party line.

"Some overseas Tibetans want to destroy Tibet," said Zhumdu. "If they had a friendly attitude, I think they could have come."

Busy elaborating on Tibet's bright future, the money Beijing is pouring in to modernize the Himalayan region and the projected annual growth rate of 10 percent, there was not even a murmur of anything amiss on the eve of the anniversary.

"They underwent months of training dictating what they can say," said Lodi, a native of Tibet.

"The Chinese government has so much to fear from the truth."