By Kalsang Rinchen
Dharamsala May 21 – Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, will visit China this month, Chinese state media said Thursday.
A long time supporter of the Tibetan cause and a friend of the Dalai Lama, Pelosi had been a target of Beijing’s ire for her criticism of the communist regime’s human rights record in Tibet.
Pelosi will lead a delegation from the US Congress that will arrive on Sunday and stay in China until May 31, according to Xinhua.
Pelosi was the only major international official to meet the Dalai Lama at the latter’s residence amidst growing unrest in Tibet that began on March 14 in Lhasa and later spread to other provinces. She had also issued a statement criticizing the Chinese government’s handling of the protests saying: “The violent response by Chinese police forces to peaceful protesters in Tibet is disgraceful.”
Speaking in March last year in Dharamsala, Pelosi said she joined the Tibetans at “a sad time” in order to shed “the bright light of truth” on the situation in their homeland.
Describing the Dalai Lama as “the embodiment of non violence”, Pelosi called for “an independent, outside investigation” after China accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the Tibet unrest. She challenged the world to “speak out against Chinese oppression.”
“If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Chinese oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” she said in her address to a gathering in Dharamsala last year.
On April 3, 2008, Pelosi introduced House Resolution 1077, which calls on “China to cease the crackdown, release protestors, provide unfettered access to journalists and independent international monitors to Tibet, and engage in a results-based dialogue with the Dalai Lama.”
Pelosi is the first ever woman speaker of the US House of Representatives, and is currently serving her second consecutive term.
