UPDATE 1-Heavy security as Tibetans mark Dalai Lama's exile

(For more stories on Tibet, click on [nPEK257634]) (Adds roadblock, paragraphs 7-8; Tibet governor, paragraphs 16-17)

By Lucy Hornby

TA'ER, China, March 10 (Reuters) - China tightened security across ethnic Tibetan areas on Tuesday, aiming to head off potential unrest on the sensitive 50th anniversary of a failed uprising that prompted the Dalai Lama's flight into exile.

The Nobel Prize-winning Buddhist monk, whom China brands a separatist, marked March 10 with a speech in India calling for "meaningful autonomy" for his homeland, and slammed Beijing for bringing "untold suffering and destruction" to Tibet.

Monks, who have initiated many Tibetan protests in recent years, told Reuters they were under close surveillance and riot police blocked roads and turned away foreign journalists from parts of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

Tibet proper has always been off-limits to all foreigners without zealously controlled permits.

"It is doubly tense today and this morning the security forces made a show of marching around," said one young devotee at the Kumbum monastery, the legendary birthplace of the lama who founded the Dalai Lama's sect of Buddhism.

"Things seem quiet here but there are cameras throughout the monastery and many of the tourists are actually plainclothes security," he added, asking not to be named because the tense situation made talking to journalists risky.

Armed police turned back Reuters reporters some 50 km (30 miles) from the heavily Tibetan Qinghai town of Tongren.

"I am very sorry but due to temporary local government regulations, no foreign reporters can come through here. This is in order to maintain peace in society and also for your own protection," a policewoman said.

This week is even more sensitive than in previous decades, because it also marks the one-year anniversary of protests in Lhasa that exploded into deadly riots China says killed 19.

A subsequent crackdown sparked waves of protests in ethnic Tibetan areas that lasted weeks. China says it handled these with minimum force, but exile groups say over 200 Tibetans died.

REVERED

Beijing blames the "Dalai clique" for the unrest that erupted across the region then -- a claim the Dalai Lama rejects.

He is still venerated by most Tibetans as their ultimate spiritual leader, despite Beijing's denunciation.

"We all revere the Dalai Lama, every monastery has his picture to show that this is our land," the young devotee said. "Of course we have hidden them away since last year."

The Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, carried an editorial extolling Tibet's development in the last 50 years and slamming what it called the misery of the old feudal serfdom, in which it said people fought dogs for food and illiteracy was widespread.

"Nobody hopes to go backwards in history, and only a few slave owners dwell on the life that once was. Tibet's happiness today is the happiness of the people, not that of the slave owners," the newspaper said.

Tibet's governor, Qiangba Puncog, told reporters on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament in Beijing that security there at the moment was "normal" and denied that there had been an increase in military or police forces.

"At present the situation in Tibet is very stable. I called my family there at midday. There are no problems," he said.

For ordinary Tibetans the high-stakes political game has made daily life in an already tense region even more fraught.

"I am a little bit scared," said 66-year-old Tibetan pilgrim Danzen Shan, praying at the Kumbum Monastery. "I do not know what will happen in the future, so I feel scared and worried." (Additional reporting by Royston Chan and Ben Blanchard; Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Nick Macfie)