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THE news says the Dalai Lama’s two representatives to the meetings
on Tuesday and Wednesday with Chinese officials in Beijing were
disappointed.
Agence France-Presse’s Aditi Singh, writing
from Dharamsala, India, reports that the meetings did not achieve
anything.
Singh quotes Lodi Gyari, the leader of the
two-man team who met with several Beijing counterparts, as saying:
“There is a growing perception among the Tibetans and my friends
that the whole tactic of the Chinese government is to engage us to
stall for time. My colleague and I told our Chinese counterpart
candidly that we ourselves are beginning to inch towards this school
of thought.”
Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen had met with “a
series of Chinese officials.” The meetings last week were part of
the “seventh round of a dialogue process that was started in 2002
but broke off last year.”
Beijing restarted the dialogue, which the Dalai
Lama did not want broken, after world opinion turned badly critical
of Beijing’s bloody suppression of Tibetan protests in Lhasa,
Tibet’s capital.
Last week’s talks in Beijing followed a
meeting in May.
Not seeking independence
The Dalai Lama has consistently said he does not
seek Tibet’s independence from China. What he wants is for Tibet
and the Tibetans to be granted genuine and meaningful autonomy so
they can practice their religion freely. He only wants China to stop
the widespread human rights abuses committed against his people by
Han Chinese officials and policemen stationed in Tibet.
But Beijing keeps insisting that His Holiness
the Dalai Lama is an evil man who is working to separate Tibet from
China.
Ajiti Singh’s Agence France-Presse report said
Gyari had briefed the Dalai Lama on Saturday.
At a press conference, in Dharamsala, where the
Dalai Lama lives in exile, Gyari said “The recent events in Tibet
clearly demonstrated the Tibetan people’s genuine and deep-rooted
discontentment with the People’s Republic of China’s
policies.”
“We had hoped that the Chinese leadership
would reciprocate our efforts by taking tangible steps during this
round,” said Gyari. But the Beijing officials were so concerned
with “legitimacy” that they did not agree to issue a joint
statement at the end of the meeting. The statement would have
committed both sides to the dialogue process.
Gyari said he and Gyaltsen were forced to tell
their Chinese counterparts frankly that they did not think the
dialogue was worth continuing “in the absence of serious and
sincere commitment on their part.”
Nevertheless, the two sides agreed to hold
another “round of talks in October, after Beijing hosts the
Olympics in August, to gauge China’s level of commitment in
resolving concerns over Tibet.”
France’s President Sarkozy
What does that do to France’s President
Sarkozy’s threat to boycott the Olympics? He angered Beijing when
he said he would probably not attend the opening ceremonies of the
Olympics. He said that to show his support for the Tibetans. Human
rights advocates worldwide accuse China of having subjected the
Tibetans to systematic political, cultural, economic and religious
oppression ever since Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1951 to
supposedly “liberate” it from the clutches of the Dalai Lama and
his monks.
On Wednesday, Chinese state media again cocked a
snook at the French president by reporting that the Chinese public
would not welcome him if he attends the Olympics.
This was a reaction to Sarkozy’s statement
that his decision to attend the opening ceremonies in Beijing would
depend on how talks between the Dalai Lama’s envoy and the Chinese
went.
President Sarkozy has assumed, on behalf of
France, the rotating presidency of the European Union on Tuesday,
when Gyari and Gyaltsen began their meetings in Beijing.
That didn’t impress the China Daily, which
said, “Chinese people do not want French President Nicolas Sarkozy
to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics,” citing an
Internet survey. The survey conducted by Sina.com.cn, a popular
China-based website, showed that 88 percent of 100,000 Chinese
respondents thought Sarkozy was “extremely unfriendly” and would
not welcome his attendance at the Olympics opening.
Comments made by foreigners linking the Beijing
Olympics to China’s unpleasant human rights record have raised
fierce nationalistic reactions from Chinese who use the Internet.
And France has aroused Chinese anger after French rights activists,
protesting Beijing’s policies in Tibet, disrupted the Paris leg of
the Olympic torch relay in April. Chinese called for a boycott of
French products and demonstrated at China branches of the Carrefour,
the French supermarket chain.
Hate object
President Sarkozy has since said he thinks it
doesn’t do any good to offend Beijing.
On Friday, just as Gyari and Gyaltsen were
giving a press conference in Dharamsala, French media reported that
Nicolas Sarkozy would attend the opening ceremony.
That makes him now the hate object of human
rights groups who had treated him as a hero when he was supporting
the Tibetan cause.
Meanwhile, Wellington Wei, the press director of
the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Manila, thinks Taiwan
will win some medals in Beijing. And he comments that those who
boycott the Olympics won’t be hurting China, which is only the
host (like the owner of the restaurant where a banquet is being
held). A boycott insults the partygiver and in this case it’s the
grand International Olympics Committee.
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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