The images of the saffron-robed monks in Lhasa's Jokhang Temple complaining about rights and freedom and demanding the return of the Dalai Lama certainly grabbed the attention of the world's media.

It was a very effective intervention by the monks. Yet, what do they know about Tibet's feudal past, which ended only in 1959?

After all, most of them are young men around 20 and know their spiritual leader only by his name.

The 14th Dalai Lama, like all his predecessors, was the biggest serf-owner. He owned every inch of land and every head of cattle in Tibet and was free to exploit -- even sell off -- his serfs and slaves.

Had the protesting young monks known this, they would probably know better than to fiddle with human rights now.

They complained of having no religious rights, but the central government has allocated more than 700 million yuan (97 million U.S. dollars) since 1980 to maintain 1,400 monasteries and cultural relics.

That's a hefty amount even for the world's fourth largest economy.

Tibet now has more than 1,700 religious sites for Tibetan Buddhism that accommodate 460,000 monks and nuns, four mosques with 3,000 muslims, and a Tibetan Catholic Church for 700 believers.

Latest figures say 100 percent of farmers and herders, who account for more than 80 percent of the Tibetan population, get free medical care.

Remember the migrant would-be father who refused to sign off a Beijing hospital's request for a Caesarean section last year, and lost his wife and baby? It was all because he had no money!

When they cried out "it's all lies", I really wondered who was lying?

The monks, who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the alleged "killing of more than 100 Tibetans and arrests of more than 1,000", also complained of having been confined at the temple from March 10 to March 26, while the riots took place on and after March 14..

None of the foreign reporters on the scene seemed to have noticed the contradiction -- that if confined they couldn't have witnessed what they claimed he had.

The death toll is apparently one of the focal issues of the debate between the Chinese government and the "Tibetan government in exile".

We regret to see that the India-based group has tried clumsily to cover up the violent nature of the riots, which killed at least 18 civilians and one police officer in Lhasa alone, injured 623 people and destroyed shops, schools and other facilities.

The death toll released from the northern India hilltop town Dharamsala, however, has been ever so confusing. It varied between 99 and "hundreds" for two weeks before the "government in exile" decided to put it somewhere between 135 and 140.

Karma Chophel, the "speaker" of the "Tibetan parliament in exile" staged yet another farce on Thursday when he lobbied for support at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The result? None of the 47 states that sat on the Council put forward a resolution on the issue, nor was any request made for a special session on Tibet.

The "speaker" and the international human rights NGOs behind him then slammed the Council for "having no teeth", and found a laughable -- if not idiotic -- reason for their failure: that large countries are untouchable.

They have apparently underestimated the independent thinking capacities of the Council and its member nations.

(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2008)