By Liu Kin-ming
Beijing has good reasons to believe that Washington is a city of counter- revolutionaries, with troublemakers running amok. Washington, a long-time prime destination for those with “anti-China” sentiment, has been unusually busy in recent weeks. A number of high-profile “enemies of China” have taken turns coming to town to bad-mouth China.
Taiwan’s former president Lee Teng-hui, a “splittist of the motherland,” paid a rare visit last month. Hong Kong’s democracy veteran Martin Lee, a “traitor,” is due to arrive next week.
Although none can compare with the Dalai Lama. He just finished a 10-day visit which proved once again that the Tibetan spiritual leader, “a separatist” in Beijing’s eyes, enjoys a rock star status among Americans with 16,000 people paying to listen to the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate in the MCI Center.
Tenzin Gyatso was chosen as the 14th Dalai Lama of the Tibetan Buddhists when he was only two years old. China invaded Tibet when he was 16. At 25, he fled to India and established the Tibetan government in exile after the Chinese suppressed a Tibetan uprising. He hasn’t set foot in his native land ever since.
Comparing the Dalai Lama’s first visit to Washington 18 years ago with the latest one, House International Relations Committee ranking member Democrat Tom Lantos said: “How times have changed.” The Dalai Lama was shunned by the administration back then. “Now,” Lantos said “it’s a social and diplomatic event.”
President George W Bush received the Dalai Lama at the White House for the third time. Bush was accompanied by First Lady Laura Bush, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs and Democracy Paula Dobriansky who is also Special Coordinator on Tibet, and NSC Director for Asian Affairs Michael Green.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also attended the meeting at the White House and later received the Dalai Lama at the State Department.
Beijing, I’m sure, was not amused.
A report critical of China’s record on religious freedom was released just when the Dalai Lama was at the White House. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in its report titled Policy Focus on China, urged Bush to raise the “deteriorating nature of religious freedom in China” with Hu Jintao during his visit to China.
A day before, the State Department released its own 2005 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.
China, along with Burma, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, was listed as one of “the eight countries of particular concern.” Rice said these are countries where governments have engaged in, or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom over the past year.
Beijing would not consider the timing of these actions as coincidence but as conspired US efforts to create trouble.
Before he left Washington, the Dalai Lama called on key members of Congress. The list included House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House International Affairs Committee chairman Republican Henry Hyde, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Republican Richard Lugar.
One noteworthy host was Democrat senator Hillary Clinton. In a speech delivered at the American Bar Association recently, Clinton lambasted China for its policy of forced abortion and labeled the one-child policy a fundamental injustice.
She also wrote a letter to Bush urging him to take up human rights issues with Hu including the oppression of Tibet. She even carries an online petition on her Senate Web site.
The lawmakers wanted to know direct from the Dalai Lama the status of negotiations with Beijing over Tibet’s future.
Noting that there has been some progress in the four rounds of talk since 2002, the Dalai Lama said things “are still very, very repressive” and that Chinese officials “show no sign of improvement or some leniency inside Tibet.”
The Tibetan government in exile no longer demands independence from China, only a measure of autonomy in regulating Tibetan affairs. When I asked Lodi Gyari, the special envoy of the Dalai Lama who has been leading the negotiations with the Chinese, whether Tibet is looking for something like Hong Kong’s one country, two systems, he said Beijing scolded the Tibetans: “How dare you demand one country, two systems.”
Ironically, it was Beijing that imposed a “17-Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” in 1951, similar to what was offered to Hong Kong in 1984. The 1951 agreement was never kept. In a much less brutal way, it seems like Tibet’s experience is repeating itself in Hong Kong.
Gyari warned that it is dangerous for China to think that once the Dalai Lama is gone, Tibet will resolve itself. Gyari said only the Dalai Lama carries the weight to convince Tibetans of giving up the demand for independence.
“The Dalai Lama is not the problem. The problem was created by Chinese policies. The Dalai Lama is the solution,” Gyari said.
