China should see the Dalai Lama as a solution, not an obstacle: PM Sangay

By Tenzin Dharpo

DHARAMSHALA, Oct 4: The Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay yesterday said China’s fixation on Dalai Lama as being an “obstacle” is mistaken. “It is wrong policy on the part of Chinese government. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a solution to the issue (Sino-Tibet), not an obstacle,” the Harvard graduate and the first Tibetan Prime Minister to be born in exile said at a press conference.

The elected Tibetan leader was responding to a recent remark by Party secretary of TAR, Wu Yingjie who on Friday in the official Tibet Daily said, “First, we must deepen the struggle against the Dalai Lama clique, make it the highest priority in carrying out our ethnic affairs, and the long-term mission of strengthening ethnic unity.”

Sangay said that the Dalai Lama is revered and followed by 99 percent of Tibetans in Tibet and that China should view him as a way out when it comes to resolving the Tibetan issue. “Chinese government statements are wrong, have been wrong and will be wrong as long as they maintain the policy (to view Dalai Lama as an obstacle),” the Tibetan PM asserted.

Meanwhile, ‘Middle way approach’ proposed by the Tibetan leader to resolve the Tibet-China issue, has been garnering support among Chinese intellectuals in the recent years. Dr. Han Lianchao, Chinese dissident and a former staff in the Chinese Foreign Ministry who is now a visiting Fellow at Hudson Institute, recently disparaged China’s dealing with the 81 year old Tibetan leader saying, “Contrary to what the Chinese Communist Party says in their propaganda, the Dalai Lama is no separatist” and that his proposed solution to of Middle way Approach, “is opposed to separatism.”

China’s elaborate mechanism to silence anything related to the Dalai Lama is a known fact. Beijing’s employment of its diplomats as an extension to restrict global leaders to meet the 81 year old Tibetan leader has been on the rise with the Tibetan leader being kept away even from religious events such as the Assisi interfaith meeting in Rome last month.

The Guardian on Sunday (Oct. 2) reported that “Getting other governments to snub the Dalai Lama has been an occupation of Chinese diplomats for the last nine years or so, ever since George W Bush awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor. That public recognition of the Tibetan spiritual leader seems to have stung the Chinese state into a furious and long-lasting reaction.”