The Guardian (and the Telegraph) report that Lucy Fairbrother’s mother thinks her weblog was tampered with:

The posting, A Short Stay in Tibet, begins with a description of life there and turns into a polemic against China, but appears to have been clumsily changed to read more sympathetically. It reads: “I admit that I have been under much influence of militant Free Tibet organisations back home. What China is doing now, and what China HAS done, are so different, and I am angry with myself for not realising the distinction before now.”

…Her mother, Linda, a TV journalist, said: “This certainly sounds unlike anything Lucy would have written. I saw the original and I certainly have no memory of anything like that figuring in it. It doesn’t sound like her phraseology. She read classics, she writes beautifully and this doesn’t sound at all like her style, quite apart from her sentiments. I would imagine it’s been done today. Students for a Free Tibet have in the past had tampering with their own internal emails.”

How beautifully Lucy writes is for readers to decide, but if the Chinese have altered the weblog, they also managed to alter the Wayback Machine – see here. Very clever, those Chinese.

LATER NOTE: My suspicions are shared by this letter to the Guardian today (thanks to Peter).