Beijing  - China on Friday took a group of foreign journalists to Lhasa, the capital of its Tibet region, to watch the Olympic torch relay in the ethnically divided city.

The government said the journalists from 29 media organizations would cover the relay Saturday as well as the "social and economic development" of the region before returning Sunday to Beijing.

The trip is one of a handful of such visits organized by the government to the region since anti-Chinese protests and rioting hit many Tibetan areas of China in March and April.

Amnesty International on Wednesday urged China to provide information about more than 1,000 Tibetans arrested during the protests.

The London-based group accused the ruling Communist Party of a "continuing violent crackdown against protesters."

It said some Tibetans were "beaten and deprived of proper health care and adequate food" during their detentions and criticized the "severe censorship facing journalists and Tibetans."

"There is very little information coming out of Tibet, but the information we have paints a dire picture of arbitrary detentions and abuse of detainees," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director.

The Beijing Olympic organizing committee confirmed Tuesday that it had cut the relay in Tibet from three days to one day, but it gave no reason for the change.

The original schedule included two days in Lhasa and one in the nearby Shannan district.

The day when the relay had been scheduled to visit Shannan, Friday, was surprisingly deleted from the new itinerary and declared a "rest day."

Officials said last month that the Tibet section of the torch relay would be "shortened" and "simplified" because of the need to change the schedule after the relay was suspended for three days to mourn the 70,000 people who died in the May 12 earthquake in neighbouring Sichuan province.

The Sichuan section of the relay was changed from June to early August.

Exiled Tibetan groups and their supporters accused the Chinese government of taking the Olympic torch to Tibet, including a separate leg last month to the summit of Mount Everest, to reaffirm its sovereignty over the region.

The international legs of the torch relay was dogged by protests against the military crackdown in Tibet that followed the protests in March and April.

The government suspended visits by foreign tour groups to the Tibet Autonomous Region in March, and paramilitary police have also imposed severe restrictions on travel by foreign journalists to other Tibetan areas where protests erupted.

The region has always been closed to foreign journalists while tourists need a special permit in addition to a Chinese visa and must register with a travel agency.

Under temporary media rules for the Olympics introduced in January, the government had said foreign journalists could travel to Tibet under the same restrictions as foreign tourists. (dpa)