After torch comes 900 minutes of propaganda DVD

NEW DELHI: With international criticism rising over the Tibetan issue and world leaders announcing plans to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China has stepped up its propaganda machine. Beijing has turned to ���history��� to counter the growing chorus of support for Tibetans.

The Chinese embassy has been busy sending out a DVD entitled,Tibet in the Past, a documentary produced by the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio of China.

The blurb on the cover says that the DVD contains a series of documentaries shot before 1960 running into 900 minutes. The DVD ``recreates social conditions in Tibet and lives of ordinary Tibetans before 1959.������

The DVD covers a period of China���s history that culminates in the flight of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959 after the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. China has maintained that the 1959 uprising was the work of aristocrats who wanted to restore oppression of the Tibetan masses who were freed by the Chinese.

``This is their point of view that it was a feudal serf culture. Systematically they show that the past was bad and that Tibetans were freed from bondage. That is what they want to project,������ said JNU professor Priyadarshi Mukherji, who specialises in Chinese language, literature and culture.

The Tibetan government in exile talking about this period in history said: ``When people are oppressed, they are likely to rise up against the oppressor. There was never a popular uprising in Tibet until the 1950s.������ The Chinese government is increasingly trying to put its point of view across in different ways to counter the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community.

China clearly sees this as a `political war��� that needs to be waged at different levels against the Dalai Lama in India. ``It is a political campaign. A fight against what we call the `Dalai clique���,������ said a Chinese mediaperson. ``It is part of our effort to spread our ideas.������ The Chinese side said that the Tibetans are also using propaganda by enlisting the help of celebrities like Richard Gere.