Tibet Will Reopen to Tourism After Protests.

Tibet will be reopened to tourists on May 1, a decision announced Thursday even as authorities showed no sign of lifting restrictions preventing foreign journalists from freely visiting Tibet and other Tibetan regions in western China to report on episodes of ethnic unrest.
Meanwhile, Communist Party officials in Tibet plan trials this month for people arrested in the violence. Wang Xiangming, a deputy Communist Party secretary in Lhasa, the capital, said more than 1,200 people would be prosecuted, according to accounts in the Chinese and Hong Kong news media.
Tibet has been closed to domestic and foreign tourists since March 16, two days after violent riots erupted in Lhasa.
Zhanor, deputy director of Tibet’s tourism bureau, said organized tours and independent travelers could return to Tibet beginning in May, according to China Daily, the official English-language newspaper.
Authorities in Lhasa attributed the tourism closing to safety concerns and property damage from the violence.
On Thursday afternoon, Xiao Youcai, an official from Aba County, a Tibetan region in Sichuan Province, said the area had largely returned to normal after a March 16 protest. State media have reported the police in Aba fired on Tibetan protesters after they tried to storm a police station. Overseas Tibetan advocacy groups have asserted that up to 20 Tibetans were killed.