BEIJING, CHINA - Chinese students living overseas have launched an "anti-CNN website" aimed at exposing the Western media's alleged biased coverage of unrest in Tibet.

The website, www.anti-cnn.com, has posted an open letter asking all Chinese to rise up against the "Western Goebbels' Nazi media", a reference to German dictator Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, the China Daily reported on Wednesday said.

The letter could not be found on the website Wednesday, but it was posted on a number of online forums for overseas Chinese.

"The Chinese nation, peace-loving, refined and cultivated, has long swallowed humiliation and submitted to insults. It can no longer be a silent lamb," the letter said.

The website brands CNN as the world's "leader of liars," exposing what it calls errors in reporting by the US news channel and other Western news outlets, including British and German newspapers and the BBC.

The letter asks all Chinese to send protest letters, faxes and emails to Western media organisations asking them to apologise for false reports on Tibet.

The unrest against Beijing's rule of the Himalayan region began on March 14 and soon spilled out to other parts of the country with Tibetan populations.

Tibet's government-in-exile says 140 people have been killed in the unrest over the past two weeks, while China says there have been 20 deaths.

The launch of the website comes at a time of increased verbal attacks against foreign media in China.

Authorities have strongly criticised Western media for its alleged biased coverage of the riots in Tibet, and the criticism has been widely covered in the Chinese press.

But foreign reporters are still barred from going to Tibet or the neighbouring affected provinces, save for a small group of Western media going on an organised government trip to the Himalayan region on Wednesday. --AFP