CHINA:There was only a "slim chance" that the Dalai Lama would be allowed to return to Tibet, because the Tibetan spiritual leader was trying to promote independence for the remote Himalayan region, Tibet's provincial governor said yesterday.
There have been negotiations between the Beijing government and the Dalai Lama's representatives to allow him back to the Chinese-ruled territory. The Dalai Lama (71) fled the capital, Lhasa, in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, nine years after communist troops entered Tibet.
"Unless the Dalai Lama completely gives up the pursuit of 'Tibet independence', both in idea and deed, the chance for him to return is slim," Qiangba Puncog, Tibet's provincial governor, said at China's National People's Congress.
The Chinese see the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist who wants to wrest control of Tibet away from China and declare independence. Beijing accuses him of continuing to spark independence movements among the 2.7 million Tibetans and refuses to allow him back inside its borders. Beijing sees itself as a liberating force which freed Tibetans of the backward yoke of a theocracy, bringing prosperity and doing much to open up the famously secretive region to modern ways.
The Dalai Lama, who is based in northern India, says that he is a moderate who preaches a "middle way" which seeks special autonomy for Tibet within China, not independence.
Analysts believe Beijing may be prepared to engage in meaningful dialogue because there are fears that when the Dalai Lama dies this could spark a focus of Tibetan anger and create a power vacuum which violent, young separatists could try to fill.
But Beijing's representative was unbowed. "It has already been 48 years since he fled the country, and in the last 48 years he has certainly never done anything beneficial for the Tibetan people or the motherland," said Qiangba Puncog.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, an Indian-based human rights watchdog, yesterday denounced China for human rights abuses in Tibet last year and predicted that religious repression would get worse in 2007.