By Michael Heath, March 13 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama urged China to renew talks with the Dalai Lama’s envoys on Tibet, shortly after Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi asked the U.S. to respect his country’s position on the Himalayan region.
“The president expressed his hope there would be progress in the dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama’s representatives,” the White House said in a statement after Obama met with Yang. “The promotion of human rights is an essential aspect of U.S. global foreign policy,” it said.
Earlier yesterday, Yang said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies that “Tibet is an inalienable part of China’s territory and Tibetan affairs are exclusively China’s internal affairs.”
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, ended contacts with China last November after eight rounds of talks failed to produce results. China deployed armed police in Tibet, stepped up patrols on the border with India and cut mobile telephone and Internet connections in some areas ahead of the March 10 anniversary of a 1959 uprising that led to the Dalai Lama’s exile, according to Tibetan groups.
Last March, the largest Tibetan uprising in almost two decades broke out after Chinese security forces suppressed a protest by monks in Lhasa. At least 19 people were killed in rioting in the city, most of them ethnic Han Chinese, the government in Beijing said.
In the ensuing crackdown, more than 200 Tibetans were killed, according to Tibet’s government-in-exile, based in northern India.
‘Hell on Earth’
The Dalai Lama said in a speech marking the 50th anniversary that Tibetans have suffered “hell on earth” under Chinese rule. He accuses the government in Beijing of committing “cultural genocide” in the region and says mass migration of ethnic Han Chinese has made Tibetans a minority in their own land.
Tibet is stable and peaceful overall, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said in a press briefing in Beijing today.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution two days ago that urged China to “cease its repression of the Tibetan people, and to lift immediately the harsh policies imposed on Tibetans.”
In a statement issued late yesterday, the National Peoples’ Congress Foreign Affairs Committee called the U.S. resolution “a gross interference in China’s domestic affairs,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Tibet, a theocratic state ruled by the Buddhist clergy before Chinese rule, has made “remarkable progress” since the launch of democratic reform 50 years ago, Yang told the CSIS. Tibet’s traditional culture has been “well preserved” and people there enjoy all the rights prescribed by law, he said.
Respect China’s Position
“I hope that people from various sectors of the United States will appreciate these facts, and understand and respect the Chinese people’s position of upholding state sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the foreign minister said.
The Chinese Communist army fought its way onto the 3.2- kilometer (2-mile) high Tibetan Plateau in 1950 and 1951, easily defeating Tibet’s horse-borne troops. The Dalai Lama, then a teenager, accepted Chinese control to save his people from war, he wrote in his 1977 book, “My Land and My People.”
In 1959, with the Chinese troops’ presence straining Tibet’s economy, citizens of Lhasa grew alarmed when a Chinese army commander summoned the Dalai Lama, without his usual bodyguard, to the army’s camp in the city. Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace and forced a standoff with troops.
“A vast multitude of excited, angry people” had “armed themselves with sticks, spades or knives” and a few guns, the Dalai Lama wrote in his memoir. To avoid a battle, he slipped out, disguised as a Tibetan soldier, and fled to India.
This article
Obama and Congress Urge China to Renew Talks With Dalai Lama was originally posted at
Tibetan Incense Blog.
© Leo Golan for Tibetan Incense Blog, 2009. |
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