After two weeks in which China contended that Tibet’s government in exile had instigated the riots earlier this month to tarnish the coming Summer Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese government on Sunday issued for the first time what it said was evidence of the plot.
Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said the Chinese police had a confession written by an unidentified monk who they said received orders from supporters of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In what an article described as the confession, the monk said: “For the sake of protecting myself, [the Dalai Lama clique] asked me not to participate in the demonstrations in person, just in charge of stirring people up.”
The Chinese government has not held a news conference to identify the monk or explain the circumstances of the confession, so it was not possible to verify either the existence of the monk or of such a statement.
For weeks, China has said it has strong evidence that the riots and protests in Tibet and neighboring regions were orchestrated by the “Dalai clique.”
The Tibetan government, based in Dharamsala, India, quickly dismissed such claims, saying that China was trying to pin blame on Tibetan exiles.
“These are baseless allegations,” Tenzin Taklha, the Dalai Lama’s secretary in Dharamsala, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “Their spinmasters are trying to put the blame on us.”
Taklha called on China to allow an independent organization to investigate the accusations.
Since riots erupted March 14 in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, journalists and diplomats have been prevented from traveling freely in Tibet and neighboring regions with large Tibetan populations, some of which have faced serious unrest.
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Pressure continues to mount for China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama. China has tried to convince other countries that the Dalai Lama’s supporters are behind the unrest and that they finance and equip separatists inside China.