An article carried Thursday by China's leading Guangming Daily said that facts show that the Dalai Lama and his backers have been ruining Tibet in the name of religion and human rights.

The author, Basang Wangdui, himself a Tibetan, is a researcher with the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences.

He said in the article that the Dalai Lama's supporters, representatives of the feudal serf owners of old Tibet, has never done anything good for the Tibetan people in the past 50-odd years.

In the late 1950s, the group attempted to split Tibet from the motherland with an armed rebellion, and after being foiled and fleeing abroad, continued a decade-old military harassment of the border areas, the article said.

In the 1970s, the group fabricated and spread rumors via Western broadcasts to instigate ethnic conflicts and violent confrontations, and instigated a Lhasa riot in the late 1980s, said the author.

In the past few years, the Dalai Lama has promised once and again to renounce Tibetan independence, but has never fulfilled his words, the author said. He noted that the March 14 Lhasa riot once again exposed the Dalai Lama's hypocrisy in claiming peace and non-violence.

The criminal activities of beating, smashing, looting and arson in the riot were against China's constitution and laws. No country upholding the rule of law would allow such behavior which would be allowed in no law-based countries, Basang Wangdui said.

The author said he himself has lived and witnessed Tibet's history under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, its tremendous departure from the poverty and backwardness characterizing the old times before the liberation.

He said Tibet has experienced rapid economic progress and improvement of people's livelihoods in the past 30 years since China adopted its reform and opening-up policy, and the Tibetan people were living a happy life as never before.

The article also asked the readers to consider that the Dalai Lama has been dressing himself as "spokesman of Tibetan people" and "human rights guard", but he himself has ignored how he trampled upon the human rights of Tibetan people when he was the serf owner.

In addition, secessionist often told the international community that "China killed 1.2 million Tibetans"; however, in the 1950s, the Tibetan local government's population total was just 1.14 million, the article said.

"If we follow the clique's logic, there would be no inhabitants in Tibet now. But why does the region still boast a population of 2.8 million today, of whom 95 percent are Tibetans and other minority ethnic groups?"

At the end of the article, the author asked people to have a better understanding of Tibet's history and the facts, and not to be duped by the Dalai Lama.

(Xinhua News Agency April 3, 2008)