Dalai Lama's supporters spread anti-China lies

When it comes to attacking China, there are no more fervent exponents of the cause than US conservatives.

For them, China is still “Red China” and the Chinese people are “ChiComs” (“Chinese Communists”).

These idiots still can’t move on from the Korean War when terms like these gained widespread currency in the Western world.

Nor are they beyond fabricating anti-China propaganda and using emails and blogs to ensure speedy and widespread circulation of their lies.

(In a previous post I referred to the lie circulated by email that a Chinese plane had been grounded in Frankfurt after arriving with safety belts holding part of the jet engine fan blades in place! See http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/10/right-wing-emails-return-to-sender.html )

The latest rubbish comes in the wake of the violent attacks on the citizens of Lhasa by separatist Tibetan thugs in March, and the equally violent attempts by separatists and their supporters to extinguish the “holy flame” of the Olympic relay torch.

Let’s deal with the riots in Lhasa first.

The riots were instigated by supporters of the Dalai Lama and coordinated by the Tibetan Youth Congress and the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement. The riots were characterized by their lack of support from most Tibetans residing in Lhasa. Only a handful of reactionary monks and their supporters took part, but by burning buildings (including a mosque) and randomly attacking passersby of Han and Hui nationality and causing the deaths of some of their victims, the rioters ensured world-wide coverage of their actions.

The violence and racism of the rioters immediately conflicted with the stereotypical Western belief that the Dalai Lama is a man of peace, and that his supporters are always the victims and never the perpetrators. Caught out by video footage showing the ferocity of the attackers, and further exposed by Western bloggers present in Lhasa who described the violence of the separatists, including that of monks, the Dalai Lama came out with the outrageous statement that agents of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the PLA, posing as monks, triggered the riots.

Not long afterwards, the notorious US right-wing activist Gordon Thomas filed a story on Canada Free Press, a conservative “news” website, that “Britain’s GCHQ, the government communications agency that electronically monitors half the world from space, has confirmed the claim” by the Dalai Lama that Chinese soldiers, posing as monks, had instigated the violence.

Thomas claimed that GCHQ possessed proof in the form of satellite images and attached the photo below as evidence. Hundreds of thousands of hits were recorded on the Canada Free Press website before they pulled the article.

The problem was that the photo, while real, was of another time and place.

Chinese bloggers were the first to notice that the uniforms of the soldiers were an older style, replaced in 2005 by a uniform on which there is an arm badge and a chest insignia (see below) both missing in the photo.

That, and the fact that it was obviously not an intelligence signals satellite photo, sent people in search of its source, which turned out to be a file photo taken during production of Michelle Yeoh’s movie, The Touch, in Tibet in 2001. Chinese soldiers are often used as “extras” in films where large crowds or ancient armies are depicted. Somehow, the photo had reached Dharamsala, the Indian seat of the Dalai Lama’s “government-in-exile” in 2003, where it was used on the back cover of the annual report of the “Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy” (TCHRD).

This discovery was made by a Western Buddhist who was appalled at the dishonesty of conservatives in their attempt to discredit China. In fact, he contacted the TCHRD by email “asking them if they could identify the image. I then received this email this morning from Tashi Phuntsok at the TCHRD:

"The photo you are referring has nothing to do with the recent unrest in Lhasa. It was true that the photo was depicted in our 2003 TCHRD Annual report back cover. The photo was a part of filmshoot (A MOVIE) made in Tibet where Chinese armies wore the monk robes. We received the photos in 2003."

Notwithstanding all this evidence, and a further disclaimer of the photo’s credibility from the “International Campaign to Save Tibet”, the Falun Gong newspaper Epoch Times is still accusing the Chinese of dressing soldiers in monks robes and instigating the Lhasa riots, and conservative websites such as Big Lizards is questioning whether or not it is one and the same photo.

On this issue, I’d say game, set and match to China.

We now turn to the violence of the separatists during the Olympic torch run.

Of all the images captured during the run, none have been as appalling as that of the Tibetan separatist thug who tried to seize the torch in Paris from wheelchair athlete Jin Jing (below).

This photo demonstrated that the pro-Dalai Lama thugs who are bent on disrupting the Olympic torch relay are prepared to endanger athletes and bystanders in order to achieve their objectives.

Again, a major embarrassment for the Richard Geres of the world.

Flushed with the success of their “soldiers in monks clothing” lie, right-wing bloggers in Japan came up with a second photo (below) of the same man on his way to the site of the torch run and labelled it as proof “that our ‘protester’ friend is in fact -- a Chinese agent provacateur”.

They cited the fact that he was discovered in the company of his “true friends” – red flag carrying ChiComs!!! They even labelled the photo "Chinese Fake Tibetan With His Real Friends"!

The fact that he is conversing with no-one, that at least two others in the crowd (behind the left and right shoulders of the woman at the front) are also draped in “Tibetan” flags and that this was obviously a mixed group of Chinese supporters and supporters of Tibetan separatism on their way to the same location apparently escaped these thickheads.

This reactionary website and email campaign complements the same tactics used in the mainstream Western media which has time and again falsified accounts of events in Tibet and used photos of police action in Nepal as evidence of the “Chinese regime’s brutal crackdown in Tibet”.

They are a great education for people who seek to understand China and to promote the friendship of all peoples and nationalities.

As Chairman Mao said, “Seek truth from facts!”