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Beijing: China has accused the Dalai Lama of plotting "terror" in Tibet and colluding with Uighur separatists in Xinjiang as it escalates a security and propaganda drive to stifle anti-Chinese unrest ahead of the Olympics.
Protests by Buddhist monks erupted in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, from March 10 and five days later anti-Chinese rioting shook the city, killing a policeman and 18 innocent civilians, burnt or hacked to death, authorities have said. Protests flared in nearby provinces with large ethnic Tibetan populations, leaving at least several more people dead.
In Sichuan, Gansu and other troubled provinces, troops continued patrolling the streets of Tibetan towns, with schools and Buddhist monasteries under tight guard.
Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, has criticised the violence and said he wants talks with China to negotiate autonomy, but not outright independence, for his homeland, which was occupied by Chinese troops from 1950.
But the government is intensifying propaganda telling its citizens and the world that the Dalai Lama, not failings in government policy, caused the trouble and that he wants to ruin Beijing's Olympic Games in August. "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," Xinhua quoted Tibet's governor, Qiangba Puncog, as saying.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, People's Daily, yesterday said: "In 2008, the Beijing Olympic Games, eagerly awaited by the people of the whole world, will arrive. But the Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence."
The paper accused the Dalai Lama of planning attacks with the aid of Uighur separatists seeking an independent East Turkestan for their largely Muslim people in northwest China's Xinjiang region.
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