China says Dalai Lama targeting Olympics
BEIJING (AFP) — China on Sunday accused the Dalai Lama of trying to take the Olympic Games "hostage", as a new official toll of those injured in the unrest in and near Tibet topped 700.
The Liberation Army Daily, the People's Daily and most other major papers carried a lengthy opinion piece warning that the "Dalai Lama clique" would inevitably fail to achieve its alleged goal of independence for Tibet.
"In 2008, all the world's people are looking forward to the Olympics, but the Dalai Lama clique aims to take the Games hostage and force the Chinese government to yield on the 'Tibetan independence' issue," the article said.
"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," it said.
The article described a litany of alleged violent incidents over the past five decades, charging that pledges of non-violence by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, were "a lie from beginning to end".
Protests that began nearly two weeks ago on the anniversary of a failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule erupted into deadly violence on March 14 in the regional capital Lhasa.
Riots then spread from the Himalayan region into other parts of China with significant ethnic Tibetan populations, including northwest Gansu and southwest Sichuan provinces.
China on Saturday raised its official death toll from the rioting in Lhasa from 13 to 19. Tibet's government-in-exile in northern India has put the death toll from the region and neighbouring Chinese provinces at 99.
The state-controlled Xinhua news agency said 94 people had been injured from March 14 to 19 in violent clashes with protesters in Gansu, including 64 police officers, 27 paramilitary police, two government officials and one civilian.
The report did not give a figure for injured protesters.
This brings to more than 700 the official number of people who sustained injuries in the recent unrest. Xinhua had reported on Saturday that 241 police officers and 382 civilians were injured during the clashes in Lhasa.
Verifying reports from Tibet and surrounding areas is extremely difficult, as the Chinese authorities have severely restricted access granted to foreign journalists. The last-known Western reporter in Lhasa was expelled Thursday.
State-controlled media on Sunday carried criticisms of Western reporters for what it said were biased accounts of what had happened over the past 10 days.
Tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users vented their anger online over what they considered unfair reporting, according to Xinhua.
"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 said.
Xinhua said peace was gradually being restored in areas of western China that had been hit by fierce protests.
Reporting from the county seat of Ngawa in Sichuan province -- where activists say eight people were killed in a protest a week ago -- Xinhua said more than half of the shops were reopened for business on Saturday.
It quoted the county's Communist Party chief Kang Qingwei as saying elementary and high schools would reopen Monday, implying they had been forced to close down for an entire week.
