Stockholm - China has "completely sealed off Tibet," which could be compared to a "giant prison," an envoy of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, said in Sweden on Monday.

However the spirit of the Tibetan people was "unbroken," Kelsang Gyaltsen told reporters, although they had experienced the "harshest wave of repression since the days of the Cultural Revolution."

Beijing - Chinese forces have tightened border controls between the Tibet Autonomous Region and neighbouring countries ahead of "expected sabotage activities" by supporters of the exiled Dalai Lama, state media said on Monday.

"We have made due deployment and tightened controls at border ports, and key areas and passages along the border in Tibet," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Fu Hongyu, the political commissar of the public security ministry's Border Control Department, as saying in Beijing.

Rebkong, China - "We are not celebrating the New Year this year," said a burgundy-clad Tibetan monk at the Rongwo Buddhist monastery in China's western province of Qinghai.

"We don't have a happy life. We have no freedom," the monk told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa to explain why he was boycotting the festivities to mark the start of the Tibetan New Year, or Losar, in late February.

He left the conversation to speak to his two companions, who knew little Chinese.

"They said they daren't speak the truth. They should say, 'Everything's OK,'" the monk said, referring to recent propaganda trips organized by the Chinese government to monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Beijing - When Herge's Adventures of Tintin spread from Belgium across Europe in the 1960s, Tintin's fictional travels in Tibet featured in one of the most popular strip-cartoon stories.

So influential was Tintin in Tibet that in June 2006 it won the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth award, presented by the Dalai Lama, for its "significant contribution to the public understanding of Tibet."

"For many, Herge's depiction of Tibet was their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet," the campaign's Tsering Jampa said at the time.

Beijing  - China's repression of Tibetans' political, civil and religious rights in response to last year's unrest has reached levels last seen in the 1970s, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a report on Monday.

"Since the protests began on March 10 last year, state repression of Tibetans' freedoms of expression, religion and association has intensified to a level not seen in Tibet since the paranoia and Maoist excesses of the Cultural Revolution [1966-76]," the London-based group said.

New Delhi/Beijing  - The Dalai Lama and China's ruling Communist Party both said they want to reach an agreement on Tibet's future through dialogue, but signs of genuine accord are as elusive as ever, 50 years after Tibet's religious leader and 100,000 of his supporters fled into exile.

After Communist Party officials met the Dalai Lama's envoys for the most recent of seven rounds of talks in Beijing in November, China said "serious differences" remained.