BEIJING – A video that appears to show police fatally beating a Tibetanprotester was a fake concocted by supporters of the Dalai Lama, China said Tuesday — the same day the video-sharing network YouTube said its service had been blocked in China.

The video has been posted on YouTube in recent days.

A spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube, said he couldn’t comment on the Chinese government’s reason for the block.

“We are looking into it and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible,” spokesman Scott Rubin said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

China occasionally blocks YouTube to prevent access to videos that criticize or shine an unflattering light on its policies.

The official Xinhua News Agency, citing an unidentified official with China’s Tibetan regional government, reported Tuesday that the video came from sources tied to the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and was pieced together from different places.

The Xinhua report said the footage purported to show a person named Tendar being beaten to death by police after a riot in Lhasa, the Tibet region’s capital, on March 14 last year. Xinhua said the person was not in fact Tendar and the wounds shown were fake.

“The Dalai Lama group is used to fabricating lies to deceive the international community and the aim of this video is to hide the truth of the March 14th riot,” Xinhua quoted the official as saying.

The government did not directly address whether YouTube had been blocked. When asked, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: “Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite.”

Users in Beijing said they were unable to access the site late Tuesday.
Security in China’s Tibetan areas has been tightened in recent weeks because of sensitive anniversaries this month. March 14 marked the one-year anniversary of anti-government riots in Lhasa, Tibet’s regional capital, while March 17 marked 50 years since the Dalai Lama escaped into exile in India after Chinese troops crushed a Tibetan uprising.


 




On Monday, traffic from China to YouTube began dwindling until it dried up nearly completely today, due to a site-wide block of the popular video sharing site in that country.

Google says it has no idea why it’s being blocked. China has demonstrated the ability to block access only to certain YouTube URLs as part of its ongoing censorship of the internet, so this site-wide ban represents a significant change in strategy.

“We do not know the reason for the blockage,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com, “and we’re working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users in China.” However, he did not specify what those steps might be.

It’s possible that one of the thousands of workers responsible for censoring the internet in China was overzealous in blocking the entire site instead of individual videos. Or perhaps something on YouTube made the Chinese government more upset than previous YouTube videos had done. Either way, all of YouTube is now blocked in China.

Some speculate that officials could be upset about footage of Chinese soldiers beating Tibetans appearing on the site.


Another possible reason for the blockade is the US Navy’s recent release of videos depicting five Chinese ships apparently trying to snag a Sonar array cable trailing behind the USNS Impeccable, which appearedon YouTube. The U.S. Navy’s official version of events, issued March 8, was that “Impeccable was conducting routine survey operations in international waters 75 miles south of Hainan Island when it was harassed by five Chinese vessels.” The Chinese disagreed on March 13: “The story of the U.S. side is totally untrue and unacceptable.”

Whatever the reason, Chinese citizens no longer have access to any of the videos of YouTube. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters on Tuesday, “China’s internet is open enough, but also needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent the spread of harmful information and for national security.”

Apparently, that “harmful information” includes laughing Wii baby, Chocolate Rain, our SXSW video coverage, and everything else on YouTube.