German weekly Spiegel.
Spiegel Nr. 37/2004 (translated from the German)
Xiao Bai, 56, vice mayor of Lhasa, recently had to suffer through embarrassing minutes. During one of the rare press conferences for foreign journalists he was asked by which law Tibetans are forbidden to display publicly pictures of the popular Dalai Lama. Instead of answering, the politician fell into a long silence. Not even renewed questioning could bring him back out of his numbness. A functionary finally ended the quiet with the words, “Now, that was the answer.” The vice of governor of Tibet, Wu Jilie, reacted more skillfully and brazenly. Replying to the same question he said: It is not at all forbidden to display pictures of the Buddhist spiritual leader, who fled to India in 1959 and who has been castigated by Beijing as a “splittist of the mother-country”. The reason why the Dalai Lama cannot be found on pictures and photos in Tibet was said to be that most Tibetans are “unhappy with the separatist activities” of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and therefore reject him. In reality the Dalai Lama is still being deeply revered.
