Tibetan monks attend a cremation ceremony Wednesday for an earthquake victim at the earthquake-hit town of Gyegu in Yushu county on April 21. (Reuters)

Earthquake survivors say it was the Tibetan monks who helped first, bringing food, pitching tents and digging through rubble after disaster hit far western China a week ago, killing thousands.

Now the Buddhist monks who responded first are being pushed out of the disaster area and off of state media — apparently sidelined by Beijing's unease with their heroism and influence.

Monasteries were given verbal orders the last two days to recall their monks. Amid hours of coverage for China's national day of mourning on Wednesday, no monks were visible in the official proceedings.

It was a jarring omission in light of their contributions to the weeklong rescue and relief effort following the quake, which killed 2,064 people and injured more than 12,000 others.

Tsebtrim, an ethnic Tibetan who works as a translator in Yushu, the county in Qinghai province hit hardest by the April 14 quake, was among thousands left homeless. He recalls heading to the local horse racing grounds shortly after the earthquake with hundreds of others who heard it would be a safe place if the local dam broke.

"There were these monks from Sichuan's Ganzi who had put up all these tents, 100 tents, in just a couple of hours and they provided drinks and food," said Tsebtrim, 31, who like many Tibetans goes by just one name. "That night, a lot of people didn't have a place to stay so I am really glad those monks showed up."

Dug through rubble

In the days that followed, Tsebtrim saw monks digging through rubble for survivors or bodies, first alone and then with the help of Chinese soldiers. He also saw them handing out food and medicine.

"It really impressed me a lot," he said during an interview from Yushu, where he is helping run an aid station.

Chinese military officials said this week nearly all the roughly 12,000 soldiers who rushed to the quake area struggled with altitude sickness and many had trouble communicating with Tibetan survivors. Tibetan-speaking monks, many of whom live in high-altitude areas or frequently make pilgrimages to them, didn't have those problems.

They flooded into Yushu within hours, on motorbikes and packed in the back of trucks.

On Saturday, they held a cremation ceremony, preparing hundreds of bodies, praying and burning the corpses in a massive trench outside Yushu.

Yet state-run broadcasters have given scant attention to their efforts, spotlighting instead the hard work of the military and the People's Armed Police as they delivered tents, water and food, and lifted injured people from cracks of crumbled buildings.

Monks also live in the quake zone, though they were not shown in media coverage Wednesday.

Dilemma for China

Robbie Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at New York's Columbia University, said the monks' contributions pose a dilemma for the communist leadership, which distrusts the Buddhist clergy because of their loyalty to the Dalai Lama.

Beijing insists the Dalai Lama is fighting for independence for Tibet, a charge the exiled spiritual leader denies. He says he seeks only significant autonomy for Tibet under continued Chinese rule.

Monasteries are kept under tight control by Communist Party authorities who routinely order political re-education campaigns for the monks. The tensions have occasionally erupted in violence.

"China has never faced this situation before, where the monks it has demonized for 15 years as potential enemies of the state turn out to be energetic contributors to social construction and community-building -- the same role that the party has always claimed for itself," Barnett said in an email.

"Perhaps that's why the work of the monks has been featured very little, if at all," on China Central Television, he said.

On Wednesday, a monk and a Tibetan activist in touch with people in the quake zone said monks from Ganzi in Sichuan and other surrounding areas had also been ordered to leave the earthquake zone.

Yixi Luoren, the head of Ganzi's Gengqing Monastery, said 150 of their monks went to Yushu but 120 had left by Wednesday on orders from the Religious Affairs Bureau and the Communist Party United Front department in Ganzi prefecture, where the monastery is located.

A rugged, deeply Buddhist region filled with monasteries and nunneries, Ganzi is known for its strong Tibetan identity and has been at the centre of dissent for years.

"They told us to do so on the phone," Yixi Luoren said. "The authorities didn't tell us the reason, but we assume they might have worried that there are too many people there and wanted us to come home safely."