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'Dalai Lama clique' slammed
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| Grace Chng |
Mon, Mar 24, 2008
The Straits Times
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BEIJING - CHINA launched another broadside yesterday against Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, while state media said Tibetan areas rattled by unrest were slowly returning to normal.
An opinion piece carried by the Liberation Army Daily, the People's Daily and most other major newspapers yesterday warned that the 'Dalai Lama clique' would inevitably see defeat for its alleged push for Tibetan independence.
'It doesn't matter if the Dalai Lama and his followers disguise themselves under the pretence of 'peace' and 'non-violence', their splittist sabotage activities are doomed to fail,' said the article.
It described a series of violent incidents over the past nearly 50 years to convince its readers that vows by the Dalai Lama of non-violence were 'a lie from beginning to end'.
| 'The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,' said the article, which also suggested a collusion between the 'clique' with Uighur separatists in China-governed Xinjiang region.
The accusations came as Tibetan areas continued to be swarmed with troops and closed to scrutiny from the outside world.
China has responded to the Tibetan unrest that erupted on March 14 in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, and spread to other neighbouring provinces with massive crackdowns.
While little is known of the situation now in the affected areas due to a news blackout by Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday peace was gradually being restored in these places. Reporting from the county seat of Ngawa, a Tibetan-populated area in south-western Sichuan province shaken by protests a week ago, Xinhua said more than half of the shops were reopened for business on Saturday.
It quoted Communist Party chief Kang Qingwei as saying high and elementary schools would reopen today.
Witnesses said that in Sichuan, north-western Gansu and other troubled provinces, troops continued to patrol the streets of Tibetan towns, with schools and Buddhist monasteries under tight guard.
On Saturday, China said 18 civilians and one police officer were killed in rioting in Lhasa, raising its official death toll from 13.
Tibet's government-in-exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala has put the toll in Tibet proper and neighbouring provinces at 99.
State-controlled media yesterday also carried criticism of Western media, blaming them for biased accounts of what has happened over the past 10 days.
Tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users had vented their anger online over what they considered unfair reporting.
'The netizens say that CNN and some Western media organisations have intentionally neglected cruelties of the mobsters, revealing the hypocrisy of 'objectivity and fairness' they had flaunted,' Xinhua reported.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS
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