Dalai Lama is "anti-human rights" - Chinese media

By Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese media denounced the Dalai Lama and his supporters on Sunday as "anti-human rights", and branded top U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi as "the least popular person in China" for her stance on Tibet.

The belligerent commentaries by the official Xinhua news agency came the day after Beijing said nine Buddhist monks had been arrested for bombing a government building in Tibet.

A Tibetan source with strong contacts in its capital, Lhasa, said the city was swirling with reports of fresh clashes between monks and security forces at the important Drepung monastery.

Neither the monastery nor the local police station could be reached for comment.

Beijing has blamed the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, for orchestrating March 14 riots in Lhasa and the unrest that followed in other ethnic Tibetan areas, as part of a bid for independence and to ruin the Olympic Games.

The Dalai Lama says he is not pushing for a separate state and denies he was behind the unrest, which China says killed 19 people. Exiled Tibetans put the number far higher.

Xinhua denounced the Dalai Lama as a sham and said he dreamed of restoring the Tibetan feudal system of serfdom.

"It is indeed the anti-human rights nature of the Dalai clique that impels the 'pro-Tibet independence' separatists to undermine China's stability and unity, disgrace China worldwide, and even sabotage the Olympic torch relay by all sorts of violent means," the English-language commentary said.