TIBET TODAY
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
BEIJING (AP) ¡ª China escalated its rhetoric against supporters of the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate's backers of planning suicide attacks.
The Tibetan government-in-exile dismissed the allegation, saying it remained dedicated to the nonviolent struggle long promoted by their Buddhist leader.
"Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks. But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans," said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government in exile in Dharmsala, India.
Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said searches of monasteries had turned up 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 19,000 sticks of dynamite, 7,725 pounds of unspecified explosives, two hand grenades, and 350 knives.
He provided no details or evidence.
"To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibetan independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks," Wu said at a rare news conference on Tuesday.
He used the term "gan si dui," a rare term directly translated as "dare-to-die corps." The official English version of his remarks released by the Public Security Ministry translated the term as "suicide squads."
Beijing has repeatedly lashed out against the Dalai Lama and his supporters since March 14 anti-government riots in Tibet, labeling the spiritual leader a "cat's paw of international anti-China forces" and denouncing protesting monks as the "scum of Buddhism."
The U.S. State Department called the Dalai Lama a "man of peace" who wanted only to talk with China about the situation in Tibet. " We continue to encourage the Chinese to engage in dialogue with the Dalai Lama and his representatives," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
In recent days China has been showing decades-old propaganda films on state television portraying Tibetan society as cruel and primitive before the 1950 invasion by communist troops. China has ignored international calls for mediation and refuses to discuss accusations of discrimination, repression and economic disenfranchisement.
The 72-year-old Peace Prize winner has condemned the violence in Tibet and urged an independent international investigation into the unrest and its underlying causes. The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said he seeks autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule.
Chinese state media says 18 civilians and one police officer were killed in the Lhasa riots. All but one were migrants from other parts of China, among the many who have flooded into the region in recent decades.
Tibetan exiles say the violence and the harsh crackdown afterward left nearly 140 people dead.
Associated Press reporter Ashwini Bhatia contributed to this report from Dharmsala, India.
Pelosi calls on Bush to boycott Olympic opening ceremonies
(CNN) -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Bush should consider boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games in Beijing this summer to protest China's human rights record.
"I think boycotting the opening ceremony, which really gives respect to the Chinese government, is something that should be kept on the table," Pelosi told "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts in an interview to air Tuesday morning, according to the ABC News Web site. "I think the president might want to rethink this later, depending on what other heads of state do."
Pelosi said she does not think U.S. athletes should boycott the games themselves.
"I believe a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would unfairly harm our athletes who have worked so hard to prepare for the competition," she said in a statement last week.
President Bush has said he intends to meet with China's president during a trip to see the Olympic Games in Beijing, which start on August 8. Bush didn't elaborate on what issues he might bring up, but his administration has accused China, a major U.S. trade partner, of human rights abuses.
Other world leaders have wrestled with whether to attend the Olympics.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he may skip the opening ceremonies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will skip the Olympics. Britain's Prince Charles said in January he has "no plans to attend the ceremony."
Pelosi has been a vocal critic of China's crackdown on anti-government protesters in Tibet.
China rubbishes Dalai Lama's remarks
Press Trust Of India
Beijing, April 01, 2008
China has rubbished the Dalai Lama's accusation that Beijing itself could be behind the recent violence in Tibet, saying it showed his "guilty conscience" and charged the Tibetan spiritual leader with "trying to pass the buck using rumours and cheating".
"The Dalai Lama's citing of hearsay rumours cannot change the truth of the incident. It only shows the sense of guilty conscience in his deep heart so that he is trying to pass the buck using rumours and cheating," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said.
Countering China's persistent attacks accusing him of having "masterminded" the violence in Tibet, the Dalai Lama had remarked in New Delhi on Saturday, "We have heard a few hundred Chinese received monks' dress."
"They (soldiers) dressed like monks. So, for a lay person, they look like monks. But the swords they had were not Tibetan, they were Chinese swords," the Nobel lareaute living in exile in India had said, seeking to turn the tables on Beijing.
Jiang, quoted by official Xinhua news agency, said: "the truth of the violent crimes in Lhasa is there for all to see and proved by ironclad evidences that cannot be denied."
The most vicious monks-led anti-government protests in two decades in Lhasa had burst into violence on March 14, leaving at least 20 people dead in Tibet and elsewhere.
photo by Lhuboom.RFA / Nepal By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU, March 31 (Reuters) - Nepali police beat pro-Tibet protesters with sticks in Kathmandu on Monday and detained more than 280 people for demonstrating against China, police and officials said, hinting at a bigger crackdown on protesters.
Hundreds of Tibetans split up into small groups and tried to storm a Chinese consular office from different directions in the Nepali capital. In what has become a familiar sight in Kathmandu in recent weeks, they waved signs and shouted slogans demanding independence for their Himalayan homeland, only to face beatings and detention.
The government later said it might have to take sterner action to ban such protests altogether, because of a commitment made to Beijing to prevent anti-China activities on Nepalese soil. "We may have to think to stop all these activities against China," said Modraj Dotel, a spokesman for the Home Ministry. "They talk against China. They raise anti-China slogans and carry placards and banners against China."
Exiled Tibetans have been protesting regularly ever since a deadly riot broke out in the Tibetan capital Lhasa on March 14 followed by demonstrations in other Tibetan areas of China.
Many Tibetans are furious over the crackdown against protesters in Tibet and resent China's decades-old rule of the Himalayan region. The Lhasa riot broke out after days of protests centred on the anniversary of the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
In Kathmandu, police broke up the rallies, grabbed the protesters by their arms or clothes and hauled them into iron-meshed vans or trucks. "We want full freedom for Tibet," 40-year-old Sonam Dolma said. "Until then we will continue to protest and make the world listen to our voice."
Police said at least 284 men and women had been detained and would be freed later. "They have been detained according to the government policy of not allowing demonstrations against China," said Bibhutiraj Pandey, a police officer from the scene.
More than 20,000 ethnic Tibetans live in Nepal.
Nepal, which gets development grants from the Chinese government, accepts Tibet as part of China. (Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Sanjeev Miglani)
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