It usually is around this time of year. March 10th is often tense because it is the anniversary of a revolt in 1959 against Chinese rule in Tibet that was crushed by the Chinese army. The region's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled with many of his followers and has been living in exile in Dharamsala in India ever since. But this year there are reports that Tibetan monks, often at the forefront of anti-Chinese dissent, are becoming particularly restive. Such reports are difficult to verify. The authorities rarely allow visits by Western journalists. Chinese officials say that regulations introduced last year aimed at reducing bureaucratic hurdles to reporting in China before and during the Olympics do not apply to Tibet. Very unusually, however, The Economist gained approval for a week-long trip, the start of which on March 12th coincided with the apparent increase in tension. It seems to have begun on the anniversary itself, when police stopped an attempt by monks in Lhasa to demonstrate. This much has been confirmed by a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing, who said monks from “some temples” had carried out an illegal activity on March 10th “under the instigation and encouragement of a small group of people.” He said they were “dealt with” according to the law. About 300 monks seem to have been involved. Reuters news agency, reporting from Beijing, said that on the next day (March 11th) more than 600 monks gathered in Lhasa to demand the release of monks detained for protesting. It said tear-gas was used to disperse them. These incidents are among the biggest reported in the city in recent years. Residents say that more uniformed and plainclothes police have been deployed around sensitive parts of the city. Policemen patrol the city centre close to the Jokhang Temple, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism where several protests, often involving just a handful of people, have occurred over the years. One resident said some plainclothes police appeared to be disguising themselves as monks. Most parts of China are unlikely to see the kind of political unrest that occurred in the build-up to the Mexico Olympics in 1968 and the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Tibet is an exception. The government's attempts to ensure stability by appealing to a sense of national pride are likely to prove far more difficult in the Himalayan region because of its ambiguous relationship with China before Communist troops took control in 1950. The authorities are also worried about the impact of recent protests in Myanmar led by Buddhist monks. Many Tibetans outside China hope to use the Olympic games to draw international attention to what they say are widespread human-rights abuses in their homeland. On March 13th police in northern India stopped a (largely symbolic) attempt by more than 100 exiles to march from the Dalai Lama's exiled home to Tibet to press their case.