By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, September 8: British Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis will visit Tibet this week as part of a fact-finding mission to China, the first such trip by a British minister, his office said on Monday.
Lewis will visit Lhasa, the administrative capital of Tibet, and Beijing between Monday and Thursday.
“It is the first visit to Tibet by a British minister ever,” a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office told AFP.
During the visit, the ministry said in a statement that Lewis will “engage with the regional authorities in Tibet and explore at first hand the political, economic, social and cultural situation of Tibetans there.”
The statement also said Lewis “will be meeting key contacts in the Chinese government in Beijing, to take forward our co-operation with China on a range of international and bilateral issues.”
Pro-Tibet campaigners reportedly urged Lewis to speak out against China’s rule of the Himalayan territory and what they argue are increased human rights abuses since last year’s unrest in the region.
Massive anti-China unrest broke out across Tibet last year. Chinese authorities claim rioters killed 22 people in the March 2008 unrest, but the Tibet’s Government in exile based in India and other exile groups say Chinese security forces quelled the peaceful Tibetan demonstrations killing more than 200 people.
The Exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that since then Beijing had imposed “a death sentence” on his homeland and remarked that the Chinese presence in Tibet had turned the Tibetan homeland into a “hell on earth”.
“It is inconceivable that a British minister visiting Tibet for the first time since last year’s protest and violent crackdown would fail to make such a statement,” Free Tibet campaign director Stephanie Brigden told AFP.
“Failure to make a public statement would be seen as offering a tacit endorsement of China’s policy in Tibet, would hand China a wholly undeserved propaganda victory and would only embolden the Chinese authorities to carry on perpetrating further atrocities.”
China has ruled Tibet since 1951 after sending in troops to invade the country the previous year.
