By Charles Hutzler

Associated Press Writer

HUAIROU, China, Sep 1 (AP) -- Ten Tibetan women attending an international women's conference staged a silent protest today against Chinese rule in their homeland.

The demonstration by the women, all of whom live outside Tibet, coincided with China's celebration of the 30th anniversary of its establishment of a new administrative system in Tibet. Communist China has controlled the Himalayan region since 1950 and prohibits calls for independence.

The 10 protesters evaded China's efforts to screen out exiled Tibetans among the nearly 20,000 women attending a conference of women activists called the NGO Forum.

Wearing traditional long, dark dresses with brightly colored aprons, nine of the women fastened white gags over their mouths and marched 1,000 yards. The tenth woman unexpectedly stepped forward to join them.

They held hands and stood for about 10 minutes in front of a pavilion at the conference grounds in Huairou, a county seat 30 miles north of Beijing.

More than 100 other women surrounded the protesters and sang "We Shall Overcome" to show support.

"We felt it would be effective to tape our mouths to reflect an environment where we don't feel free to speak," said Tenki Davis of the San Francisco-based International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet.

"It's symbolic. We've been muzzled," Davis said.

The woman who joined the protest at the last minute was confronted afterwards by a Chinese woman from the government-supervised All China Women's Federation. As the Tibetan told reporters of the persecution of Buddhist monks and nuns, the Chinese woman shouted denials.

The two women shouted and pushed each other until foreign delegates led the Tibetan away. She said she escaped from Tibet 10 years ago and lives in Germany, but did not want her name used out of concern for relatives left behind.

China refused to allow exiled Tibetan NGOs to be accredited to the women's conference. The few Tibetans who obtained visas as members of other groups say Chinese security officers have videotaped them constantly.

The Tibetans screened their own videotape about life in exile Thursday. Chinese attempted to seize it, but foreign delegates snatched it back.

Chinese say Tibet has been part of China since the 13th century, but the region actually ruled itself for much of that time and regarded itself as independent.

Most Tibetans remain loyal to the Dalai Lama, the former spiritual and temporal leader who fled to India in 1959. Sporadic protests against Chinese rule -- often led by Buddhist monks and nuns -- still occur inside Tibet, but security forces put them down swiftly.

On Sept. 1, 1965, China established the Tibet Autonomous Region, an administrative move that allowed Beijing to rule the area directly while giving it nominal self-rule.

The state-controlled media has run numerous reports in recent days linked to the anniversary, highlighting economic development in Tibet. Several high-profile public works projects have been hurriedly finished.

"The principal task in Tibet is to maintain social stability and safeguard the unity of the motherland," the Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily (Renmin Ribao), said today.

Recent Western travelers to Lhasa and overseas monitoring groups say security, always tight, has been increased. Western reporters have been barred at this time.