While some Western media rashly accuse China of "violent crackdown" on the "peaceful protests" in Tibet, some foreigners there disagreed.

"Many reports were not accurate," said Tony Gleason, field director of Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, an American organization which helps poor Tibetans through skill training and small sum of financing.

Surfing the Internet in his hotel, Gleason saw the Western reports on the incidents in Tibet. In some reports, the riot was described as "peaceful" and "unarmed" demonstration cracked down by the Chinese government.

"The protests were by no means peaceful," Gleason said.

He recalled that he was dining at the Snowland Restaurant with his wife and one-year-old daughter on March 14 when a large group of mobsters threw bricks and hand-sized rocks at cars on the street.

"I saw black smoke from the center of the city, and there was more smoke from different parts," he said at the Gajilin Hotel where he lives and works.

"I never saw police open fire to the mobsters," he added.

Ursula Rechbach, from Slovenia, has worked more than eight years for the Lhasa-based Project for Strengthening the Tibetan Traditional Medicine.

The lady in her 50s said she was having lunch with her colleagues on March 14, when the riot started. Her Tibetan colleagues quickly accompanied her to her hotel.

"We hardly made it," Ursula said of the terrible day, adding she saw from the roof of her hotel that young people in late teens holding long sticks and stones in their hands, screaming, turning over cars, setting cars on fire, and smashing and looting shops.