During the recent campaign of disinformation and demonization of China we students have felt very upset; our feelings have been hurt, but we do not blame you, the French people, because the responsibility lies not with you but with certain irresponsible media organizations and professional agitators.

Like all professions, journalism has professional ethics that ought to be respected. Journalism requires impartiality, objectivity, checking and verification of information, moderation in commentary. Calumny, unproved accusations and distortion of the facts should never be permitted.

But during the recent events certain journalists have departed from their proper role, which ought to be to inform, and have turned into vigilantes possessed of an innate truth, a truth, furthermore, of a delusional simplicity. They have recounted a fable of a gentle victim and a merciless bully; the roles, moreover, were assigned at the outset.

Having assigned these roles a priori they then tried by any and all means to justify their depiction of events. Selectively citing historical facts, they portrayed what was part of the Chinese revolution as an invasion of an integral part of China, making no mention of the obscure theocracy that oppressed 95% of the Tibetan population. They speak about peaceful demonstrations by Tibetan monks, they confuse Nepalese police with Chinese police, pass off 20 year old images as today's, publish information without any pretence at verification, exaggerate death tolls, rely on unreliable witness reports etc.

The testimony of foreign tourists including video footage shot by them showing violence inflicted on innocent people, of innocent passers-by lynched by young rioters, was, apart from a few still pictures, completely ignored. Even worse, certain irresponsible media organizations invented and imposed on us the hypothesis of a bloody repression carried out by the authorities, without, of course, supplying any impartial or credible evidence.

Very few Chinese were interviewed by the press, and the few that appeared were usually put in the position of a defendant outnumbered and surrounded by hostile magistrates.

Yes.

By all means criticize the Chinese government for blocking and controlling information but not by inventing facts.

The way the media have treated news of the Tibet riots amounts to

- Media aggression
- Hype and ideological trickery
- An attempt to impose hegemony of discourse
- A campaign of disinformation
- A gross calumny

The primary victims are the fraternal and compassionate French people, who put their trust in the media, but have unfortunately been manipulated.

A news system that had been a model for us, for the future of China is no longer that. Public opinion is not an object be manipulated, neither in China nor elsewhere. What we have witnessed is nothing more or less than a form of censorship operating within the system of a free press.

And the intellectual laziness of certain politicians, the elite of France, has astonished us.

Human rights has become for some people, I mention in particular Mr. Robert Menard, a sort of crusade and the excuse for all sorts irresponsible agitation undertaken for political ends.

Why was he nowhere to be found during the repeated torture of the inmates of Guantanamo, or when Iraqi prisoners were being subjected to outrages by American soldiers? Isn't this a sort of selective blindness?