For a country that supposedly has free speech, it’s surprising how much autocratic control is exerted against the publishing of China-friendly articles. Not every person who writes with a sympathetic tone to China’s cause is a communist-employed propagandist. Not a single columnist has objectively considered the issue they write about, so much has been reported of the Free-Tibetan cause yet not a single source has mentioned the deaths of the Han Chinese result from it. Footage of the Lhasa riots show organised Tibetan rioters throwing petrol bombs at shops, burning and looting shops, stoning han Chinese in the streets, burning police stations. We don‘t ask for the western media to side with China, nor do we expect it to be sympathetic to it, but as a news reader, I do expect an objective and truthful coverage of events.

I am a student doctor residing in the UK; I have spent exactly half of my life in China and the other half growing up here. After reading biased reports regarding the China-Tibet issue, I only wish to persuade the media to shed light on the complete truthful sequence of events in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet, as I believe in a free media that lets their readers and not the editors decide what truth is and what is propaganda.

Despite extensive media coverage on the Tibet issue, it is still unbeknown to most people what happened in Lhasa on the 14th of March. There was broad footage of Tibetan campaigners snatching the torch but the BBC did not show a single video clip of the riots that had taken place in Lhasa from on the morning of the 14th of March. The articles that do exist either dismiss it as fabricated by the Chinese government or are strongly biased and discredit what ever testimonials that were heard from the Chinese and foreign tourists.

The violent riots which precipitated the destruction that was to follow were barely talked about, if this had happened anywhere else it would have been circulated in the media and reported to the public as breaking news. Yet why the censorship? What is also visible from the tapes are monks joining in with the riot, much like Islam the Buddhist religion is a utmost peaceful one, those
"Buddhists" whom promote and actively partake in violent and criminal actions would no longer be considered Buddhist. The suspicion over the tapes of the riots is supposedly due to its contents being considered untruthful or have been doctored and are propaganda on the behalf of China. But lets consider this, video tapes originating from Osama Bin Laden are played over and over again on all stations, does that make him a credible source? Free of propaganda intentions?

In every newspaper I turn to be it the Times, the Guardian or even the Metro, there are constant comparisons between China and the Nazi-Germany, I’m sure no other country would stand for this, it is as much offensive as it is an unsubstantiated claim. I will retract my claim if evidence can be produced that shows mass genocides conducted by the Chinese government, forcing people who do not look Chinese to work in labour camps. On the other hand, ever since the construction of the People’s Republic of China, several billions of yuan has been spent on improving the state of the Tibetans’ living standards, transport to allow tourist access to beautiful Tibet, giving the peasants who were ruled under feudalism their own land and means to support themselves. Unlike the han Chinese Tibets are given state funded benefits if below a certain income threshold, and they need not abide by the controversial “one-child-policy” which is enforced by law on han Chinese. Of course I am not denying that with modernisation there are inevitable damages to landscape and local culture. But much like industrialisation in the 18th century, the black smog will pass and the benefits reaped.

As with every country there is always a complex history underlying the nation’s formation and China is no exception, many claim that Tibet was a free nation in its own right since 1912, however, the Dalai signed a treaty just 2 years later reverting to it’s original status. Some say it was an independent country from the 1950s, however, in the 1950s there were civil wars, invasions, famines and China was spit into more than one piece. It has been argued that China did not even exist in that period, how could it honor the de facto independence of Tibet?

What I think is the most important point is the fact that the people you saw yesterday at the Westminster protests were not government organised protesters, they were ordinary people who love their country too much for it to be mutilated in the words of the western media. The media has made so many mistakes, be it deliberate or not in the reports regarding Tibet and China, examples include Nepalese police exerting firm action on violent protester being constantly referred to as being Chinese. Consider this my educated fellow readers, with such intense media spotlight being cast on the Chinese-Tibetan affair, with most already presuming all Chinese actions violate human rights why would they go out of their way to abuse Tibetan protesters? Because they want bad press in the eve of the 2008 Olympics? The BBC may be able to subtitle pictures of ambulance vans and crews as “military presence” but only the illiterate are fooled.

If the western media continues being fixated on the idealism of a Nazi-Germanyesque, communist, autocratic, human rights violating China then eventually the learned amongst the country will eventually discover for themselves that it is not the whole truth they are getting from he western media. And it is only a matter of “pot calling the kettle black”, the western media that fixates on the censoring, lying and biased Chinese government will become exactly that.

Tibet is as much a part of china as Northern Ireland is a part of Britain, if China’s media started supporting the IRA, I wonder what the reaction in Britain will be, well this is how we, ordinary Chinese citizens feel right now. All that we ask is for a fair portrayal of the true events, we don’t expect anyone to side with us, just be fair.