Tokyo – The quest for greater Tibetan rights under Chinese rule will continue even after the Dalai Lama dies, a senior envoy to the spiritual leader said in Japan Thursday.
“What we believe very strongly is that the issue of Tibet will not die,” said Tempa Tsering, the chief representative of the Buddhist monk who has been based in India after fleeing his Himalayan homeland in 1959.
“Once his holiness is dead and his soul is in the air, whatever guidance he gives … they’ll follow it,” said Tsering, the former foreign minister of the Tibetan government in exile in India.
China indicated in March it would take a hard line on the selection of a successor to the 74-year-old Dalai Lama.
Qiangba Puncog, Tibet’s former governor, insisted the final decision on the reincarnated successors to the Buddhist top lamas lies with Beijing.
Traditionally, the search for a new Dalai Lama was conducted by high lamas, but China’s officially atheist Communist Party-ruled government has claimed the right to intervene, citing a precedent set by a past emperor.
The issue of who will succeed the Dalai Lama looms as potentially explosive after an outburst of anti-Chinese violence tore through the region in March 2008, prompting a tight security clampdown, which continues.
China vilifies the exiled monk as a separatist, a charge he denies, maintaining he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule.
Many Tibet experts believe China is waiting for him to die and then install its own Tibetan spiritual leader.
Shrugging off China’s comments, Tsering quoted the Dalai Lama as saying his reincarnation “will be born in a free society, not in a closed society.”
Tsering also said the younger generation of Tibetans, both those living in exile and inside China, would keep up the struggle to retain their cultural identity and seek greater autonomy in the Himalayan region.
He said the 2008 unrest was “by the younger generation” and that among exiled Tibetans “we have the younger generation, who are … more dedicated, more gifted. So they are coming up.”
