OTTAWA – Tibet’s Beijing-appointed Governor invited Canadian members of parliament to his China-occupied region, but a top MP immediately questioned whether such a team would ever be allowed to visit.
Chamba Phuntsok, governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region, ran the gamut of pro-Tibet protestors and Dalai Lama supporters at a meeting in Ottawa on the last leg of a four city Canadian tour.
He was challenged by MP David Kilgour, chairman of an inquiry into China’s human rights performance in Tibet, to allow a panel of MPs to visit “without hinderance.”
“You are welcome (to come),” Chamba Phuntsok replied to the former Canadian secretary of state for Asia-Pacific, at Ottawa’s National Press Club.
But Kilgour, chairman of the House of Commons human rights sub-committee, told AFP he doubted anything would come of the offer.
“I would be delighted if it happened,” said Kilgour. “I would be even more delighted if it could be an unrestricted visit.
“But, no, I don’t think it will happen. I would be very surprised if it did.”
Chamba Phuntsok recently visited Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto on a tour designed to press Beijing’s views on Tibet, in response to a highly visible anti-Beijing campaign by supporters of the region’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
He was greeted in Ottawa by a handful of Tibetan demonstrators, including some who managed to get into the Press Club for his speech.
One asked if he would allow independent observers from such organizations as Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders and Human Rights Watch to visit Tibet without restriction.
“If all the participants were Tibetan, we could accommodate them.” Chamba Phuntsok said.
“Normally, we allow foreign organizations to travel freely in Tibet. I am saying, with full confidence, that we have nothing to hide.”
But one of the protest groups, Students for a Free Tibet, claimed in a statement: “The visit is part of a major initiative to spread Chinese Communist Party rhetoric on Tibet to westerners.”
Chamba Phuntsok’s tour came a week after Beijing warned the Dalai Lama there was no chance of talks on his return from exile until he dropped a “splittist agenda.”
The Dalai Lama has asked China to resume dialogue with his government-in-exile, which sent delegations to Beijing in September 2002 and in May 2003.
The Buddhist leader, respected worldwide for his teachings and principles of non-violence, leads the Tibetan government-in-exile in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where he fled in 1959.
Beijing occupied Tibet, which it insists has been an integral part of the Chinese nation for centuries, in 1951.
Since then it has been accused of trying to wipe out Tibet’s unique Buddhist-based culture through political and religious repression as well as mass ethnic Chinese immigration.
