BEIJING – British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who visits China next week, must push Beijing to deal directly with the Dalai Lama, an international rights group said on Friday.
The same day, hundreds of Tibetans sang and danced in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala to mark the 45th anniversary of the founding of their so-called government-in-exile there.
The London-based Free Tibet Campaign called on Blair to press Chinese President Hu Jintao to meet the Dalai Lama and asked him to steer clear of China’s celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Tibetan autonomous region, which culminated with a parade in Lhasa on Thursday.
Blair is leading the European delegation to the annual EU-China summit on Monday.
“Free Tibet Campaign has warned Mr. Blair not to participate in any event which commemorates this anniversary and has further asked him to make a public statement of concern about Tibet whilst he is China,” the group said in a statement.
The Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, nine years after China’s People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet to establish Beijing’s rule.
The Buddhist leader maintains he wants more autonomy, not independence, for Tibet and says China’s image has been tarnished by its human rights record in Tibet.
Beijing charges him with continuing to provoke separatism and refuses to let him back into the Himalayan region.
In Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama has lived for decades, hundreds of Tibetans and foreigners assembled at a Buddhist temple for celebrations led by Samdhong Rimpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Reuters TV reported.
Rimpoche said he hoped talks with Chinese authorities would produce a solution to the Tibet problem in the near future.
“We are expecting a sustainable dialogue in the near future. And this year, the fourth round of discussion in Switzerland was fruitful,” Rimpoche said in his speech.
“Now, we are looking forward to the fifth round of discussion where we will be able to express all points in a frank and free manner,” Rimpoche said.
China gave no sign it was willing to compromise with the Dalai Lama to allow him to return to Tibet after the secretive fourth round of dialogue between representatives of Beijing and the Tibetan god-king ended on July 1.
In a pointed commentary published late on Thursday, the state-run Xinhua news agency questioned the Dalai Lama’s assertion he wants greater autonomy and criticised him for bringing foreign influence into “an internal affair”.
“It might not be respectful to doubt the wisdom of ‘His Holiness’ for not waking up to reality, but we have to wonder what on earth the Dalai Lama wants for the claim of ‘greater autonomy’,” the commentary said.
(Additional reporting by Y. P. Rajesh in New DELHI)
