China blames foreign media for unrest

Tibetan monks carry portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama during a protest yesterday in Dharamsala, India, against China's crackdown on Tibetan protesters. PHOTO: CNA

China foreign media yesterday for their reporting on the violence in Tibet, while it continued to block or detain international journalists trying to cover the story.

Raidi, a former vice-chairman of the National People's Congress, said foreign news coverage of the riots that gripped Lhasa last week was "outrageous and ill motivated," Xinhua news agency said.

"Some Western media purposely distorted the facts and viciously described a severe crime as a peaceful demonstration, so as to slander our legitimate efforts to keep social stability as a violent crackdown," said Raidi, who was born in Tibet and like many Tibetans uses only his surname.

Independent from Tibet has been near-impossible because of China's tight control over information and a ban on trips to the area by foreign reporters.

On Monday, police in Lhasa kicked out reporters from three Hong Kong TV stations and made TVB delete footage of violence.

Many officials have been told not to talk to the media. Yesterday, a woman from the secretary office of the Religious Affairs Bureau in Lhasa said they had been told "to tell the media we have nothing to say."

International shows have been blacked out in China when they start broadcasting images of the violence and access to Tibet stories on the Internet has also been blocked.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it had counted 30 incidents where foreign journalists had been detained or restricted from traveling, including in Beijing and Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

Associated Press photographers and a reporter and cameramen from Associated Press Television have also been detained and followed.

A Finnish Broadcasting Co reporter and cameraman were detained outside the monastery town of Xiahe in western Gansu Province. Police wanted their footage.

When the reporters mentioned new reporting rules promising greater freedoms for foreign journalists, police replied: "You don't want to know what will happen if you don't show us the footage," correspondent Katri Makkonen said.

TORCH RELAY

The torch relay for the Olympics will go to Tibet as scheduled despite the unrest in the Himalayan region, a senior Beijing organizer said yesterday.

"The situation in Tibet has essentially stabilized, the ... torch relay will proceed as scheduled," Jiang Xiaoyu (蔣效愚), executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, told a news conference.

The torch relay, which starts when it is lit in Olympia, Greece, on Monday, is scheduled to visit Tibet twice.

VATICAN

Pope Benedict appealed for an end to the violence in Tibet yesterday, calling for tolerance and dialogue to end the crisis.

"Violence does not solve problems, but only aggravates them," he said at the end of his weekly general audience, adding he was following the events "with trepidation."

It was his first public mention of the unrest there since the violence began and it followed calls by some Italian intellectuals for him to break his silence over Tibet.

"We ask almighty God, source of light, to enlighten the minds of all and to give each one the courage to choose the path of dialogue and tolerance," he said.

"My heart as a father feels sadness and pain when I see the suffering of so many people," he said.

PRESSURE

The Dalai Lama held talks with Tibetan exiles yesterday, his aides said, a day after the spiritual leader threatened to resign if violence in his homeland worsened.

The meeting with the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) and other high-profile pressure groups came as he faced an intensifying challenge to his position as leader of the exiles' movement, based in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

The TYC has called for a review of the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way" policy, which espouses non-violence and autonomy within China rather than independence.

In contrast to the 72-year-old Dalai Lama, the group has also called for an international boycott of the Olympics.

A close aide to the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Taklha, said that a meeting with TYC leader Tsewang Rigzin and a handful of other leaders had taken place.

As many as 99 Tibetans are believed to have been killed in violence since the protests began.

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