BEIJING, March 17 (Reuters) - Dozens of students held a sit-down protest at a university for ethnic minorities in Beijing on Monday, bringing pro-Tibetan demonstrations to the sensitive capital for the first time.

The protest in the Olympic Games host city came hours before a deadline for rioters in Lhasa to turn themselves in after street violence in the capital of the Buddhist Himalayan region in which dozens are believed to have died.

About 40 students were staging the sit-down at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing after many were taken away, onlookers said.

Any student protest in Beijing is significant, bringing back memories of the pro-democracy student protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989 which were crushed by the military with great loss of life.

Teachers were urging their students to get up and leave the protest.

"Originally I wanted to participate, but people dragged me way," one Tibetan student from Gansu province said. "I have a friend in there and I am worried for her. This could go on for a long time."

Students took pictures from the campus building. "There's nothing to see here," one guard said, pushing students away.

China said on Monday it had shown great restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it said were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama seeking to wreck the Beijing Olympics in August.

The governor of Tibet said no guns had been used against protesters in Lhasa, but troops poured into neighbouring areas to enforce control as the regional capital counted down to a midnight deadline for protesters to give up. (Reporting by Ian Ransom; Writing by Nick Macfie)

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