Starting on March 10th, Tibetans around Tibet, often lead by monks and nuns, staged peaceful protests. Chinese security forces responded by cracking down on monasteries and nunneries, initially around Lhasa but elsewhere as well. In response, on March 14th, riots took place in Lhasa. There have been continual acts of protest – almost entirely non-violent – since then, but the Chinese government has repeatedly claimed that they have “evidence” that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile orchestrated the uprising, both violent and non-violent. More recently, China has been putting forward statements from a monk who they say was an agent provocateur for the TGIE. Despite weeks of insisting they have evidence to support their claims, the Chinese government has never produced evidence that the TGIE or the Dalai Lama instigated an uprising from exile, nor have they held press conferences or produced the monk referred to in statements to answer questions about how he allegedly incited the uprising. In short, China’s statements are as proven as my statement that Hu Jintao and Jacques Rogge like to bugger goats together under a full moon (which is true, according to a goat handler who has confessed to me that he provided the goats for Hu and Rogge’s evenings of bestiality).

The latest unsubstantiated charge coming out of China is that Tibetan monks, under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, were preparing suicide squads with equipped with tens of thousands of sticks of dynamite and other small arms, which had been hidden in Lhasa. I’ve read a lot of press accounts, both in American politics and foreign news, where the journalist is dealing with spurious claims, but this Associated Press story of China’s latest made up shit evidence against the Dalai Lama is as close as I’ve ever seen an article come to the written equivalent of laughing the subject out of the room and down the hall amidst a hail of boos. The article refutes China’s claims as spurious not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six separate times:

The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s defense, calling him “a man of peace.”

“There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said…

“Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks,” Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said Tuesday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”

Experts on terrorism and security risks facing Beijing and the Olympics have not cited any Tibet group as a threat…

“There is no evidence of support for any kind of violence against China or Chinese,” said Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Westminster University in London….

Andrew Fischer, a fellow at the London School of Economics who researches Chinese development policies in Tibetan areas of China, dismissed Wu’s warnings as “completely ridiculous.”

I wonder what it’s like to be called a liar by six different sources in one article.

I think that this is far more for domestic consumption than to get international approval for their violent, murderous crackdown in Tibet. These sorts of unsubstantiated claims foment nationalism and we’re already seeing a serious uptick in Han Chinese nationalist sentiments against Tibet. I can’t possibly believe that the Chinese government thinks the world will buy their lies about Tibetan monk suicide squads sent on missions by the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.