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BEIJING : China on Sunday accused the Dalai Lama of trying to take the Olympic Games "hostage" over Tibet, as a new official toll of those injured in the unrest in and near the Himalayan region 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".
Tibet's Beijing-appointed administrative leader Qiangba Puncog said "secessionist forces" had to be defeated in the region to ensure the success of the Summer Games in August, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
"We must... win the final victory in all respects against the secessionist forces to help ensure a successful Olympic Games with a stable social situation in the Tibet Autonomous Region," the agency quoted him as saying.
But the Dalai Lama called Beijing's charges against him "baseless". Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, where he is holding Buddhist workshops, he said: "I have always supported that the Olympic Games should take place in China."
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.
The unrest has become a major public relations challenge for China just five months ahead of the Beijing Olympics, once again placing the global spotlight on Tibet.
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday called for peace in regions around the world tormented by strife, including Tibet.
Speaking to pilgrims in St Peter's Square, he urged the troubled regions to "seek solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good."
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 meanwhile put the death toll from the region and neighbouring Chinese provinces at 99.
Xinhua 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 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 last week.
State media said Sunday that tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users had accused Western journalists of biased reporting regarding the events of the past 10 days.
"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.
The agency said more than half of the shops were reopened for business in the county seat of Ngawa in Sichuan province, where activists say eight people were killed in a protest a week ago.
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.
In Kangding county, also in Sichuan province, a large number of soldiers could be seen patrolling the streets, a foreign journalist told AFP. Banners in the streets there urged residents to "Unswervingly Safeguard National Unity".
Staff at Lhasa hotels reached by telephone on Sunday said the situation in the Tibetan capital seemed stable, although it was far from business as usual.
"We've got absolutely no guests," said an ethnic Tibetan working at one hotel.
An ethnic Han Chinese woman, employed at Lhasa's Mingshi Hotel, told AFP occupancy rates were less than a third compared with the same time last year.
Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge said in a press release on Sunday that the Games could be a changing factor in China.
As Greece prepared to light the Olympic torch in a ceremony at Ancient Olympia, he said: "We believe that China will change by opening the country to the scrutiny of the world through the 25,000 media who will attend the Games.
"Awarding the Olympic Games to the most populous country in the world will open up one fifth of mankind to Olympism," he said. - AFP/de
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