Dharamsala, Dec 4 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama has urged the European Union to stand firm on the issue of human rights in order to protect the long-term interests of the Chinese people, reported the BBC.
“Our friends should take firm stand,” he told the BBC. “That I think for the long run is an immense help to the Chinese people.”
“[The] Chinese people also want freedom of expression, free media and rule of law,” he added. “If you adopt an attitude of appeasement, in the long run [it is] in no-one’s interest.”
“There is a Tibetan saying: some wounds in the mouth recover by themselves,” His Holiness told Reuters in an interview. He acknowledged that relations with China, the world’s most populous nation, were important, but said a firm approach was in the country’s own interest.
“There is a Tibetan saying that a more genuine friendship should be more frank. That’s important”, he said.
“During Chamberlain, just before the Second World War, too much appeasement failed,” he said, referring to 1930s British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempts to reach an accommodation with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is due to address the European Parliament in Brussels today and meet the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, at a Nobel laureates’ gathering in Gdansk, Poland on December 6.
China pulled off from an EU-China summit that was to begin in Lyon on December 1 in response to a scheduled meeting between French President Sarkozy and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. China said that the meeting would harm its bilateral ties with France.
China, which sent military troops to occupy Tibet in 1949, reviles the Dalai Lama as a “separatist” trying to split Tibet from it, and regularly protests against countries that agree to visits by him or warns world leaders of diplomatic consequences if they meet him.
