The Tibetan monks who marched defiantly through Lhasa chose the 49th anniversary of the uprising against China for their protest.

They had good reason not to wait for the 50th.

This summer’s Olympic Games have turned the world’s spotlight on China as never before, a fact not missed even on the remote Himalayan plateau.

The past year has seen a sharp increase in protests across Tibet, by monks, nuns and ordinary Tibetans, risking imprisonment and torture to call for human rights, freedom of religion, autonomy and the return of the Dalai Lama, their leader-in-exile.

Tibet watchers are in no doubt of the significance of the timing as the clock ticks down to the Beijing Games. “There’s been an extraordinary upsurge in protest in the last year,” said Matt Whitticase of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign. “Tibetans realise that now, if ever, is their moment.”

Recent months have seen a growing spate of protests, such as those last month in Rebkong, where thousands marched to demand the release of political prisoners, including several Buddhist monks.

Activists appear emboldened by a rising tide of international criticism against China’s human rights record in the lead-up to the Games, from Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal as artistic advisor over China’s role in Darfur, to the refusal of Prince Charles, a long-time supporter of Tibet, to attend.

News of these developments inevitably seeps through to Tibet, despite China’s best efforts. As well as the various Tibetan-language foreign radio broadcasts, Tibetans have grown canny at getting round the official controls, using pre-paid sim cards or hard-to-regulate technology like Skype to communicate overseas.

Getting news into Tibet is often easier than getting news out. News of the Lhasa protests took more than 24 hours to emerge and, even then, accounts were hard to gather and footage non-existent. China has ensured that will remain the case by keeping Tibet out of bounds to foreign reporters despite the abolition of reporting restrictions on the rest of the country. That runs counter to China’s promise to grant total press freedom as required by the Olympic pledge.

Reports that paramilitary police fired guns in Lhasa should worry Beijing as much as the protests themselves. Beijing faces the dilemma of whether to put down such protests and hope news never gets out or let them go on and embolden others to join in. If Chinese police were, say, to shoot dead a Buddhist monk, it is inconceivable news would not get out and force ambivalent foreign governments off the fence.

A similar dilemma awaits them during the Games, as 22,000 foreign journalists, more than double the number of athletes, will pour into China to cover the events and the inevitable protests that accompany them. Activists both Chinese and foreign are limbering up for major protests over every issue from democracy and Burma to Darfur and torture. The media will be the world’s witness to any attempt to crush those and the images will be beamed around the world.

Foreigners already know much of China’s roles in such issues. To the average Chinese, however, the West’s concerns over Tibet are a mystery. The Dalai Lama has called for peaceful protests during the Olympics to raise awareness about Tibet among millions of Chinese unaware of the situation there. The Olympics, it is argued, are an opportunity to apply pressure to China while it cares deeply what the world thinks of it. In the long term it may be what its own people think of it, armed with the truth, that determines what road it takes.

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