Special report: Tibet: Its Past and Present

    BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Qiangba Puncog, Tibet Autonomous Regional Government chairman, said Monday morning at a news briefing that the Dalai clique's version on describing the latest riot in Lhasa and echoing tilted news coverage of some Western media are "ridiculous."

    They are confusing right and wrong while labeling the riot as "peaceful demonstration", and slandering efforts of local law enforcement to keeping order as "crackdown on the peaceful demonstration," Qiangba Puncog said.

    "I'm so indignant to hear that the Dalai clique and some Westerners called the severe violence as 'peaceful demonstration'," the chairman said.

    "It's further more ridiculous that those people distorted the efforts of our law enforcers to keeping people safe and society order as 'crackdown on the peaceful demonstration'," he said.

    Partly in response to the tilted Western coverage on the Lhasa riot, Qiangba Puncog said, "I would like to know whether there is any government preaching democracy and advocating rule of law could sufficiently tolerate such violence."

    Qiangba Puncog said the law enforcers who were sent to violent scenes kept great restraint and strictly abided by the enforcement rules.

    "To the best of my knowledge," he said, "nobody in our law enforcement teams carried or used lethal weapons all the time."