China will seal off the Tibetan capital this week before the arrival of the Olympic torch relay, closing the Himalayan city to farmers and insisting that even schoolchildren must carry new passes. Panic buying has gripped the city as hundreds of thousands of people prepare for the tight security restrictions.

Details of the lockdown in Lhasa emerged as official Chinese media reported that a specially adapted Olympic torch had arrived yesterday at the Tibetan base camp of Mount Everest. Organisers hope that an ascent will mark the literal high point of the global torch relay.

Certainly China is taking no chances of disruption to the procession when it wends its way through the capital. Farmers for miles around have been told that they will not be allowed to enter the city to sell their produce from May 1. Every resident of Lhasa must register for a special pass.

Residents said that they could not remember such draconian restrictions on movement since martial law was imposed in the city after several days of deadly riots when rampaging Tibetans opposed to Chinese rule set fire to swaths of the city in March 1989.

Tibetan authorities are under pressure to ensure that no monk demanding the return of the Dalai Lama or a Tibetan chafing under Chinese rule demonstrates in the path of the torch. A team of mountaineers is due to carry the flame to the summit of Everest, the world’s highest peak, on about May 10.

From May 1 until June 20, when the torch is due to pass through Lhasa, residents of surrounding counties have been ordered not to enter the city.

Officials of counties and villages in a radius of 30 miles (50km) around Lhasa have called meetings and notified farmers that they will not be able to travel to the city to trade. Farmers who take crops of potatoes, yak butter and juniper branches to sell to pilgrims to burn at altars outside main temples have been told they will have to stop from May 1, residents told The Times.

Residents of other villages said that only those equipped with a new special permit issued by the local county administration would be allowed to enter the city. They said it would be difficult for nomads and farmers to obtain such passes as they were not registered with a government work unit.

In Lhasa, news of the measures prompted a wave of panic buying among residents anxious that they would have difficulty negotiating security cordons around the city to reach shops and markets. One city resident said: “People are stocking up on food and other everyday necessities because they are worried about a martial law-type situation.”

City residents must also obtain special passes. Before May 1, everyone must submit a copy of their identity card and a one-inch photo to their work unit. The local police are issuing them with a pass so that they can move around the city. Those who do not belong to a government work unit must complete their paperwork with their neighbourhood committee.

The passes are required for schoolchildren, including kindergarten and primary school pupils. Residents said they believed that one reason for this was that the torch route would encompass Jiangsu Road in the city, which is lined with several large primary schools.

The passes are compulsory for all residents of Lhasa, including Tibetans, ethnic Han Chinese and ethnic Hui Muslims.

Even the dead are not exempt from the checks. One family was stopped recently by armed police en route to a site east of Lhasa where the dead are taken for the Tibetan sky burial, in which the body is dismembered and fed to vultures in a custom necessitated by the difficulty of burial in the frozen ground and the lack of trees for burning. They said the police wanted to check if their relative had died as a result of injuries received during riots. After the body was unwrapped, they were allowed to proceed.

China says order has returned to the city since the riot on March 14 in which Tibetans rampaged through the streets, stabbing and stoning ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to hundreds of shops and offices. Officials say that 18 people were killed.

Lhasa will reopen to Chinese tourists on May 1, but the city will remain off limits to foreigners. Foreign students are not being allowed to renew visas after the end of the academic year in July.

Restrictions to protect the Olympics are going into effect elsewhere. Security checks in Beijing at hotels, entertainment areas and rented homes have been increased. The MIDI Music Festival planned for May has been moved to October. Hong Kong travel agents said this month that the government visa office had declared multiple-entry business visas would not be available from mid-April to mid-October. In the past they were easy to obtain.

Times Recommends

• Both sides blame US for worsening relations
• Stieg Larsson: losing the plot over his cash
• Odd creature paralysed by incompatible parts