Dalai Lama kicks off Western tour with China broadside
The Dalai Lama accused China of "suppression" on Thursday as he demanded autonomy for Tibet at the start of a five-country Western tour three months before the Beijing Olympics.
"The Chinese political authorities' reaction, as before, was suppression. So it is very sad," he said of China's military crackdown on violent protests in Lhasa in March that Tibetan leaders say left 200 dead.
Speaking in Germany, the first stop on his tour, the Dalai Lama called for autonomy for the Himalayan region invaded by Chinese troops in 1950 and stressed that Tibetans wanted to live in peace with China.
"Genuine harmony must come on the basis of trust, trust very much based on equality," he said after landing in Frankfurt. "So far these are lacking. We need genuine autonomy."
He added that for China, better relations with Tibet was "in the own interest of the people of this huge country," but that instead communist-ruled China had become "more leftist" and created resentment well beyond Tibet's borders.
"That policy is bringing more crisis, more demonstrations than in 1959," when he fled to India following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
"Even Tibetan students in Peking (Beijing), even these people have joined in expressing their feelings with candlelight vigils. It is an indication of their resentment."
China's reaction to the Tibet unrest drew international condemnation and heaped pressure on Beijing over human rights ahead of the Games, with activists disrupting the global relay of the Olympic torch.
Beijing says Tibetan "rioters" and "insurgents" killed 21 people and accused the Dalai Lama of being behind the violence and fomenting trouble ahead of the Olympics.
Representatives of the Dalai Lama held talks this month with China to try to defuse tensions.
The 1989 Nobel peace laureate's salvo kicked off a tour that will also take him to the United States, Australia, Britain and France and only conclude days before the end of the Olympics on August 20.
His schedule in Germany has raised eyebrows as he will meet neither Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is in Latin America, nor Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Critics accused the German government, which has designated Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul to meet the 72-year-old, of appeasing China after a chill in relations caused by Merkel receiving him last year.
The schedule has left neither side happy, with the Dalai Lama's representative in Europe branding Steinmeier's decision not to meet him "an unhappy one" and China protesting about Monday's meeting with Wieczorek-Zeul.
"We will remain consistent. We object to a member of the German government receiving the Dalai Lama and to Germany allowing him to carry out this visit," Junhui Zhang from the Chinese embassy in Berlin told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
China has also raised objections to the spiritual leader addressing a parliamentary foreign affairs committee, the head of the committee Ruprecht Polenz told regional paper Muenstersche Zeitung.
After arriving in Germany the Dalai Lama expressed his condolences for those killed in this week's earthquake in China.
He held talks with Roland Koch, premier of the state of Hesse, as well as separately with Juergen Ruettgers, another state premier, and with Norbert Lammert, speaker of the German parliament.
Ruettgers said afterwards that the recent talks between the Dalai Lama's representatives and the Chinese government offered a "great chance" for both sides to settle their differences.
"The possibility for an improvement in relations is there," Ruettgers said.
The second leg of the five-nation swing will take the Dalai Lama to Britain for nine days, where he will hold talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Brown drew fire on Wednesday after it emerged that he will not meet the Tibetan spiritual leader in his Downing Street office, as predecessors Tony Blair and John Major had done.
On Friday the Dalai Lama was due to give a talk on human rights and globalisation in the west German city of Bochum before travelling to Moenchengladbach and Nuremberg.
AFP
