World Tibet Network News Tuesday, February 24, 1998

BEIJING, Feb 24 (Reuters) - China on Tuesday hailed its controversial

40-year control of Tibet as a victory over feudalism and branded the

region's exiled spiritual leader a liar for alleging human rights abuses in his former homeland.

"New Progress in Human Rights in China's Tibet Autonomous Region," carried by the official Xinhua news agency, offered everything from prison menus to colour television ownership data to back the official Chinese view of the 1950 communist takeover as the "liberation" of Tibet.

"The democratic reform carried out in Tibet in 1959 ended the history of a feudal serf system which merged religion with politics, and gave the more than one million serfs and slaves in Tibet, accounting for more than 95 percent of the population, the right to be their own masters," the document said.

"The situation as regards human rights in old Tibet bears no comparison

with the situation in Tibet today," it said.

In 1959, China's army crushed the last of a series of anti-Chinese

uprisings in Tibet and the Dalai Lama, spiritual and temporal leader of

Tibet's traditional theocracy, fled into exile in northern India.

China on Monday said the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his peaceful campaign for more autonomy for Tibet, was the head of a "a dark, savage and cruel system of merging politics with religion and feudal serfdom."

"He also fabricates sensational lies to befuddle world opinion," the report said of the globetrotting Buddhist monk.

China's rule had respected Tibetan spiritual beliefs and political autonomy while bringing substantial material benefits to the impoverished region, its said.

It cited average annual economic growth of 11.9 percent in from 1991-97, 10 consecutive bumper grain harvests since 1987 and a 25.5 percent increase of meat output since 1991. Schools, factories and hospitals had likewise seen exponential growth.

Tibet's population had more than doubled from 1959-96 to 2.44 million, of which 95 percent were ethnic Tibetan, it said.

"This lays bare the lie that the 'the population of Tibet is decreasing,' refutes the bluster about 'Tibetans suffering from genocide' emanating from the Dalai Lama and some Western sources," the report said.

Last December, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists said Tibet was "under alien subjugation" and called for a United Nations-run referendum to decide the region's status. China bitterly rejected the proposal.

The barrage of anti-Dalai Lama propaganda and statistics on economic growth since China annexed Tibet came as Beijing won a big concession from human rights critics, who often focus on Chinese rule over the restive Buddhist region.

On Monday, European Union foreign ministers announced they would not put forward a resolution criticising China's rights record at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights meeting in Geneva next month.

The departure from Europe's policy since the Chinese military crushed

pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989 coincided with an EU delegation visit to Beijing to discuss human rights with Chinese authorities.

Also on Monday, three U.S. religious leaders began the Tibetan leg of an unprecedented tour of China to discuss religious freedom. The clerics have tread softly in China, dealing only with official Chinese religious organisations.

Another possible explanation for China's largest recent propaganda exercise on Tibet is that the 39th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when the Dalai Lama traditionally appeals for international support for Tibet, falls early next month.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao on Tuesday dismissed

speculation about the timing of the report.

"This is what the government has done for years and will continue to do," he told a news briefing.