Beijing crushing Tibetans, exiled political leader says

India: As Tibetans prepare to mark 65 years since a failed uprising against Chinese rule and questions loom over the Dalai Lama’s successor, the diaspora’s elected leader said Beijing is crushing his people.

Tibetans on March 10 will commemorate the 1959 uprising against Chinese forces that led the future Nobel laureate — and thousands of his followers — to cross snowy Himalayan passes into neighbouring India and set up a government in exile.

But the anniversary has also put the question of who will succeed the ageing Dalai Lama into sharp focus, with the choice likely to spark a controversial geopolitical contest.

The charismatic spiritual leader already stepped down as his people’s political head in 2011, passing the baton of secular power to a government chosen democratically by some 130,000 Tibetans across the world.

Penpa Tsering, born in India in 1967, was elected in 2021 as its second-ever leader, or sikyong.

“If you look at the policies of the Chinese government today, they’re squeezing us — like a python squeezing us out of our breath slowly,” Tsering told AFP in an interview at the office of the Tibetan government in exile in India.

“That’s why we are dying a slow death.”

Tibet — ruled with an iron fist by China since the 1950s — was historically an independent country, but Beijing maintains its long-held position that “Tibet is part of China”.

Tsering readily admits the task of seeking a “resolution to the Sino-Tibetan conflict” with vastly more powerful China can seem overwhelming.

But the committed Buddhist takes a long view of history.

“Nothing is permanent,” he said, sitting in front of a Tibetan flag in the hills above the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama also lives.

India has hosted the exiled Tibetan leadership for decades and is itself a regional rival of China — tensions between the world’s two most populous countries flared after a deadly Himalayan border clash in 2020.

“There have been a lot of empires in this world, and every empire has fallen,” Tsering said.

But as the campaign for a free Tibet drags on, many worry there is a more time-pressing issue ahead.

The 88-year-old Dalai Lama has shown no indication he faces serious health problems, but the internationally recognisable face of Tibet has dramatically reduced his once-frenetic globetrotting.

“He’s always very aware of his mortality... So one day he will die, that is understood, that’s a matter of fact,” Tsering said.

“But, of course, we like to hope that there will be some resolution to the cause of Tibet during the lifetime of this Dalai Lama.”

Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama is the 14th reincarnation of the leader of an institution dating back six centuries, chosen by monks according to ancient Buddhist traditions.