Chinese fauxtography

We know that Hezbollah and their friends at AP and Reuters used fauxtography during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war -- that is, either elaborately staging photo scenes, or outright photoshopping news images, to make Israel look bad.

It should come as no surprise that the Chinese government is engaging in fauxtography in its war against Tibet. Take a look at these two photos, both of them distributed to the media by the Chinese government.

It's easy to spot the difference, when the two are juxtaposed: the knife-wielding fellow in the top right has been photoshopped out of the second photo.

Why did the Chinese propagandists erase that man?

According to this story in the Epoch Times, it's because that "Tibetan rioter" was not Tibetan at all, but rather a Chinese policeman dressed up as an ethnic Tibetan, sent out to wave a machete and generally look menacing. It's part of the Communist strategy to paint peaceful Tibetans as the violent brutes. It's the same reason the comical Chinese ambassador to Canada compared the pacifist Dalai Lama to the Nazis.

But the Chinese didn't count on one of their agents provocateurs being recognized -- so they hastily changed history by handing out a new photo.

I'm impressed that the Czech Republic and Poland are boycotting the Olympics' opening ceremonies. That shouldn't be surprising -- it hasn't even been twenty years since the yoke of the Soviet Union was lifted from their necks. They haven't forgotten that dictatorships thrive on propaganda, and that China sees its Olympics as a chance to get the world's good housekeeping seal of approval for their brutal repression. The Czechs and Poles won't be a party to that, and Canada shouldn't be, either.