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Chinese authorities arrested dozens of Tibetans who were protesting a mining project in one of their communities, according to Tibetan activists and the government in exile, an act of defiance by a community that has been tightly controlled by Beijing.

On Nov. 5, scores of people in a Tibetan autonomous area in the western Chinese province of Sichuan protested after learning of the start of a gold mine in a pasture area used by nomads for their sheep and yaks, according to accounts from 40 people there collected by a group of seven Tibetans in exile from relatives and friends in the village.

After the villagers in Gayixiang township confronted local authorities about the mine, which was at an early stage, Chinese authorities arrested at least 60 of the protesters,according to the exiled Tibetans, all of whom are originally from the town, and theTibetan government in exile. Chinese authorities have blocked access to Gayixiang,which the Tibetans refer to as Kashi village, cut off communications and intensifiedsecurity in the area, the group said.

The Tibetan government in exile, which is based in Dharamshala, India, said it has corroborated the information through its own contact in Tibet. It said that, as ofThursday, 11 of the nomads initially detained continued to be held.

The Wall Street Journal was unable to independently verify the Tibetans’ reports.

Beijing has imposed increasingly draconian restrictions on Tibetan people living inChina as part of an effort to tighten control over ethnic minorities and stamp outseparatist sentiment. In recent years, China has stepped up restrictions on Tibetanreligion, education and language—even sending young children to state-run boardingschools to be inculcated in Chinese culture—and imposed strict surveillancemeasures on Tibetan communities.A security guard stands watch at a boarding school in Sichuan province.

China has used roads, railways, dams and other infrastructure projects to integrateTibetan communities with the rest of the country. However, Tibetans say suchprojects are often aimed at tightening Beijing’s control over their communities.

Tibetans, many of whom are nomads, have clashed with Chinese authorities over plans to exploit natural resources in the Tibetan plateau, arguing that such projects endanger their livelihoods. People opposing these projects have faced detention, torture and lengthy jail sentences, rights groups say.

Chinese authorities didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The site for the gold mine is in a valley the locals call Serkog—which means GoldValley in the local Tibetan language—about four hours away from Gayixiang, which has been the site of previous protests against Chinese authorities.

With the onset of winter, villagers had moved their animals away from the valley.When villagers learned of the mine, they went to the local Chinese officials and asked them to stop, said Thupten Rabten, a 42-year-old Tibetan-language activist and Gayixiang native who has lived in India since 2006. He is one of the seven Tibetans who gathered information on the protest from acquaintances in the village.

According to the information gathered by Rabten’s group, the officials initially responded to the complaints by saying that the land for the planned mine belongs to the state and that any attempt to halt the project would be illegal.

The next day, the protest escalated as more Gayixiang residents joined in. The authorities then detained dozens of protesters, according to the information gathered by Rabten’s group. Shortly after the arrests began, local government and security officials, along with representatives of the Communist Party agency overseeing ethnic and religious affairs, sealed off the village. They warned locals not to speak about their matter to anyone, according to the information that the group gathered.

Authorities seized the villagers’ phones, according to the group.

“Even if someone from a family was arrested, the family was not allowed to share this information with others” in their neighbourhood, Rabten said in an interview.

Rabten and two of his team members said authorities had attempted to establish mines in the area in the 1990s and again in 2010, but protests led by a monk from a local monastery thwarted those efforts. Tibetan nomads fear that mining will pollute the grass and water they rely on for grazing their animals.

Rabten and others from Gayixiang who now live in exile said that before the recent crackdown over the mine, Tibetans in the area were already facing restrictions on cultural and religious practices, including a prohibition on prayer gatherings and on elders circling sacred sites during major festivals.

Earlier this year, according to the Tibetan government in exile, two senior TibetanBuddhist monks at Yena monastery, in a town about 255 miles from Gayixiang, were given jail sentences of up to four years after they publicly opposed a dam and hydropower plant that local Tibetans feared could submerge their homes and ancient monasteries.

In a letter to the United Nations last year concerning the dam, Chinese authoritiessaid they had worked with local residents to relocate them.

Earlier this year, China embarked on the construction of a $167 billion mega dam andhydropower project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in the Tibetan plateau on the border with India. That project aims to deliver electricity from the site in Tibet toChina’s industrialized southeast coast. Chinese authorities ignored concerns from local Tibetans about environmental damage and potential disaster in the earthquake-prone area.

Tibet is sometimes referred to as “Water Tower of Asia” as many glaciers feed rivers and tributaries originating in Tibet that flow down to the countries across theHimalayas in South and Southeast Asia, irrigating farmland and providing fresh drinking water to hundreds of millions of people.

Lobsang Yangtso, a senior environmental researcher with the International TibetNetwork, an advocacy group based in India, said environmental protests by Tibetans are “peaceful resistance” to Chinese infrastructure projects in Tibet.

“Tibetans are protecting their sacred and ancestral land,” Yangtso said. “China andthe international community should respect traditional knowledge and localcommunities to make them ideal stewards to protect the Tibetan plateau.”