No lying? "One hundred times, thousand times I have repeated this. It is my mantra -- we are not seeking independence," he told reporters in Dharamsala, India, on Thursday.

Yet the Tibetan Youth Congress vowed to pursue "Tibet independence" at the cost of blood and lives in a March 10 statement, which says "they would never give up the fight for Tibet independence".

On the same date, the group launched a so-called "March to Tibet" in India. Organizers claimed that once they were blocked outside China, they would stage protests and instigate followers to echo them by making trouble inside China.

How would the Dalai clique justify itself then?

After the riot broke out in Lhasa, the Dalai clique maintained real-time contacts with the rioters, via emails and by sending video discs, and dictating instructions to his hard core devotees and synchronized their moves, police sources say.

So who is lying? The members of the Dalai clique or the rioters they backed, who shouted "Tibet independence" and waved the flag of the "Tibetan government in exile"?

Their plot certainly left the sacred city of Lhasa weeping and bleeding. But it will not taint the faith of the Tibetans.

Ask Losang Cering, a Tibetan doctor, who suffered a broken cheekbone and cerebral concussion and he'd tell you he didn't regret helping the Hans.

Ask Canadian tourist Susan Wetmore, who happened to witness the Lhasa riot, and she'd tell you how a cab driver risked his life to get her to Lhasa's Gonggar Airport.

Ask Zhoi'ma, from Nyingchi, who admitted he was paid "several hundred yuan" a day to loot, beat and set fire.

And ask Qoizhag, a retired policeman, whose mother died under the whip of serfowners. At six, he fled to the Drepung Monastery to become a monk. After the Communist Party of China ended serfdom in Tibet he was able to go to school.

"The Dalai Lama preached benevolence," said Qoizhag, 67. "All that I saw was the whip, plus the recent violence."

The faithful in Tibet are following Sakyamuni; whoever is hiding behind the violence has apparently betrayed Him.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2008)