Deliberately telling lies

The Chinese government last week sent a delegation of Tibetan legislators to the United States to counter what it calls a lack of accurate information about life in occupied Tibet.

Regarding accusations of torture and imprisonment for expressing political or religious views, a fellow by the name of Tenzin Chodrak said of his fellow Tibetans, "I think that some of them are deliberately telling lies, and some of them are saying so because of bias."

If you have the stomach, watch this video released just yesterday by the Tibetan exile government and see for yourself what kind of bias Tibetans might be harboring. The first part of the video is rather mild and shows protesters in March 2008 being whipped with batons as they lay handcuffed. The second half is more gruesome, with footage of the mutilated body of a young man tortured for intervening in the public beating of a monk by Chinese security officials.

While the Chinese government cries crocodile tears for being misunderstood by the American public, it succeeded this week (presumably through economic blackmail) 0f convincing the South African government to deny a visa to the Dalai Lama, who was to attend a congress of Nobel Peace Prize winners. That meeting now seems in jeopardy as many of the other winners are refusing to participate if the Dalai Lama is denied entry into South Africa. Among the Peace Prize winners is Bishop Desmond Tutu, former SA president FW de Klerk, and former political prisoner Nelson Mandela, all of whom it appears are still needed in South Africa to remind their countrymen of right and honorable behavior.

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