South Africa barred the Dalai Lama from a peace conference in Johannesburg this week, saying today it did not want to endanger the government's relationship with China. The move prompted sharp criticism from the Nobel Committee, among others.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan people's peaceful uprising against Communist China's repression. Since last March, widespread peaceful protests have erupted across the whole of Tibet. Most of the participants were youths born after 1959, who have not seen or experienced a free Tibet. Having occupied Tibet, the Chinese Communist government carried out a series of repressive and violent campaigns. They thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they literally experienced hell on earth. The immediate result of these campaigns was the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama has claimed life in Tibet has become "hell on earth" under Chinese rule, and warned that traditional Tibetan culture has been pushed to the edge of extinction. In one of his most striking and powerful speeches, the Tibetan Buddhist leader marked the 50th anniversary of the 1959 uprising that led to his flight to India by saying China had created "untold suffering and destruction" and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama said today more and more Chinese were beginning to see a problem with Beijing's rule over Tibet, lamenting how the homeland he fled 50 years ago had become a "hell on earth".

In March 1959, the world had heard only a few rumours of trouble in Tibet, after the Chinese closed the borders with India and Bhutan but the Indian government was being informed by its diplomats in Lhasa.

Police and troops are deployed to contain dissident monks on anniversary

Charles Darwin has been accused of many things – but never before of being a closet Tibetan Buddhist.

Tales of the City

It is easy to call on the world's freedom movements to seek the path of negotiation over the way of violence. But what happens if it gets you nowhere? That was the bleak question asked by Tibetan exiles at a meeting in Dharmsala in India that ended at the weekend.

Tibetan exiles have shied away from pursuing total independence from China and agreed to back the non-violent "Middle Way" policy of the Dalai Lama.

Phil Void's rock band has never made the cover of 'Rolling Stone' but in Dharamsala, the home of Tibet's government in exile, they are hugely popular - even his Holiness is a big fan. Clifford Coonan reports

Pressure from younger generation leads to tactical shift in campaign for independence from China

Earlier this week, I wrote a story about the Dalai Lama's growing impatience with the Chinese authorities in regard to his efforts to secure autonomy for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama left hospital in Mumbai this morning after being treated for abdominal pain, smiling and waving to waiting photographers.