World Tibet Network News Sunday, February 01, 1998

BEIJING, Feb 1 (AFP) - The Dalai Lama "has done nothing worthwhile for Tibetan people," the official Xinhua news agency said Sunday, mounting a fresh attack on the exiled spiritual leader.

In a dispatch headlined "Tibetans Exhibit Dissatisfaction With the Dalai Lama," it said under Chinese rule, "both the material and the spiritual lives of Tibetans have improved considerably in sharp contrast to when the Dalai held power in the region."

It quoted Tibetan farmer, who it said was aged 65, as saying, "We are living a much better life than before, and I see no reason to listen to rumors instigated by the Dalai, a person who has done nothing worthwhile for Tibetan people."

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959, eight years after Chinese army rumbled into the Roof of the World.

Xinhua said 85 percent of farmers living in the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region have been lodged in new housing over the past 12 years and that their income has quadrupled.

While the Dalai Lama denies "the monumental economic and social achievements in the autonomous region," the Chinese agency said, "an increasing number of Tibetans have expressed dissatisfaction with the Dalai Lama's actions designed to split the motherland"

In December, Chinese authorities in Tibet called the Dalai Lama "the principal source of instability" in the Himalayan region, rejecting the existence of any other cause for opposition to Beijing's rule.

"Disruption and sabotage by the Dalai Lama clique are the principal source of instability in our region," a commentary in the Tibet Daily said.

The struggle against the spiritual leader is "a struggle of life and death between the masses and revisionist feudal forces." it said.