DHARAMSALA – Tibetans have opted for a younger look for their parliament-in-exile in northern India, according to election results announced, with some new members saying they would press for independence for their homeland.
The stance would pit them against the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who settled in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala in 1959 after a failed uprising against Beijing’s rule.
“What’s needed is independence,” Karma Yeshi, a youth activist and newly elected member of the Tibetan parliament, told AFP.
The younger members were among 43 declared elected Wednesday to the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies by Tashi Phuntsok, chief election commissioner of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
China says its occupation of Tibet liberated it from feudal oppression and Beijing established a Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965.
But the Dalai Lama says Tibet’s six million people still suffer repression and there is no real autonomy. However, he has dropped his demand for independence and has been campaigning for China to provide Tibetans with more rights.
This so-called “middle path” has dismayed many younger Tibetans who believe it has brought no results. They want the Dalai Lama to renew his call for independence.
“The middle-path approach of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has not worked and will not work in dealing with communist China,” said new deputy Serta Tsultrim, 32, who edits a Tibetan-language newspaper and advocates Tibetan independence.
Of the 16 first-time members, the majority are between 25 and 45, said the election commissioner. He gave no breakdown but the results give younger Tibetans, generally viewed as more radical than their elders, a voice in parliament for the first time.
The remainder of the 43 posts were taken by incumbents, mostly staunch followers of the Dalai Lama, 70, and from his generation.
Tibetans in exile voted for members of the Assembly on March 18, when a first round ballot for a premier was also held.
Incumbent prime minister monk-scholar Samdong Rinpoche looks set for re-election after taking a huge lead in the first round of ballotting. The final round is June 3.
The parliament-in-exile is a consultative body. Tibetans elect 43 members and three are nominated by the Dalai Lama.
It is headquartered in Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama settled in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Beijing’s rule in Lhasa.
The first official contact between the Tibetan government in exile and Beijing was established in 1979 but collapsed a few years later.
Contacts resumed in 2002 and China’s government and the Dalai Lama held their fifth round of talks in February.
