Atlanta, Pericles? Don't you mean Berlin?

Hi Journo

The Kashgar "terror attack" near the Yiquan Hotel bears all the earmarks of the Central Propaganda Department and state media to distort the truth.

China's police brutality is well known. What is less known is the number of revenge attacks on police by their victims and attacks are not restricted to repressed ethnic minority groups. On July 1, six police were killed in a Molotov cocktail and knife revenge attack by a man on a Shanghai police station. Right across China, many more police have been killed and injured in civil uprisings responding to official corruption and police brutality.

In Kashgar eyewitness accounts were blocked by an immediate media and internet lockdown, coinciding with a crackdown by police warning locals against speaking to foreigners. Journalists are under 24/7 surveillance. Two Japanese journalists interviewing locals were detained, beaten and their recording equipment destroyed by police. An AFP journalist "detained" in his hotel room by police was forced to delete all images plus written and recorded notes of the attack.

Officials claim two men drove a truck into a group of 70 police jogging 3 abreast along the road. The men jumped out, threw two bombs and attacked the police with machetes. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement is blamed for the attack and this is where the claim lacks credibility. Like many reports on terror attacks, details are sketchy and often contradictory when it comes to the explosives used.

Uighur groups lack network, infrastructure and funding to plan and execute attacks compared to foreign Islamic extremists.

Organised terror group do not waste resources by running into a group of police on foot when they had explosives on board. Because of the three long lines, the explosive effect would be minimal and the police would react quickly. When jogging, police do not venture forth on the streets of Xinjiang unprotected. They are accompanied by armed vehicles.

Closer scrutiny of the official assault reports tends to support a revenge attack by individuals, rather than terrorism.

The video, genuine or not, succeeding in achieving maximum effect with minimal effort and zero risk.

The NINETIES -More than 20 years later the Tibetan leader decided to bring the domestic tension with the Gelugpas to the Tibetan public, issuing a ban on Dorje Shugden. Why?

Simple, he needed a red herring to cover the fact that just before his Nobel Prize, in 1988, he had given up the independence of Tibet –offering China “autonomy” instead of independence– without consulting the Tibetan people, all alone on his own.

His move towards China practically remained unnoticed by the Tibetan public, and the few who became aware of it didn’t have time to oppose him because soon after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tibetans thought the independence of Tibet was finally within reach. The “autonomy” thesis of the leader remained largely ignored.

The first important political opposition against his "autonomy" theory –a nice word for accepting that Tibet is part of China– erupted at the end of 1995, when the hopes kindled by the Nobel Prize had vanished. The opposition was lead by his brother Norbu. He created the Walks for Independence, openly defying his brother the Dalai Lama.

To avoid the spread of the pro-independence opposition among Tibetans, who are fiercely in love with their Motherland, the Dalai Lama declared that the Protector Deity Dorje Shugden harmed his own health and the cause of Tibet and proclaimed the famous ban.

So at the end of the year 1995 began the pro-independence opposition against the Dalai Lama’s “autonomy” idea, and he declared the ban against the deity Dorje Shugden in March 1996. This dates are not to be forgotten.

This red herring was a success. The persecution took inquisitorial tones, not only with the burning of sacred books and statues and even of houses of practitioners but with the prohibition for these to hold civil jobs, to attend ceremonies, and many other attacks on their human rights. The Draft Constitution of the Tibetans was changed to bar the practitioners of the deity from holding public office.

The world protected automatically the Dalai Lama's fame, never believing that the Lord of compassion was persecuting his own people.

YEAR 2008 -The Dalai Lama chose 2008, the year of the Olympic Games, to try to force China into accepting him back, on his own terms. Instigated by him or not, the riots in Tibet gave him the opportunity to loudly announce this time his desire to reintegrate Tibet to Mother China.

He needed again peace at home while proclaiming his solution of handing Tibet to China –but the exile Tibetans hate this idea.

To distract them he restarted and intensified the persecution against the Dorje Shugden practitioners. The opposition to independence still exists, but the people are too involved in implementing this new witch hunt –and they don’t dare oppose their leader. They’ve seen a clear mirror of the danger of opposing him: the Dorje Shugden devotees, treated as traitors sold to the Chinese.

The last great chapter of this religious persecution started last January, on the eve of the riots, and the main victims were the great Buddhist universities, the Southern India monasteries of Ganden, Drepung and Sera. There were imposed the oaths in front of deities against the practitioners, the ostracism, the segregation, the creation of an outcast group of Tibetans that Tibetans cannot even talk to, let alone share any other human relation with.

At least a thousand monks have been expelled from their monasteries. Such forced schism is huge. But the lay people suffer too, defenseless in the midst of fanaticized communities.

Accustomed to his leadership, disoriented by exile, Tibetans have chosen to stick to their Dalai Lama, ignore his failures and accuse others for the loss of their country. So under the Dalai Lama’s instigation, the Dorje Shugden practitioners have become the scapegoat at whom anybody can throw a stone.

So this is the truth behind the issue. A deity has been prohibited and its practitioners are being persecuted to further the autocratic rule of the Tibetan leader, distracting people's attention and avoiding opposition.

The suffering in the fractured Tibetan community and the destroyed Buddhist Sangha is difficult to describe.
May the world open its eyes and stop the Dalai Lama.