‘Fight against Dalai Lama will continue’
BEIJING: China will continue its fight against the spiritual head of the Tibetans, the India-based Dalai Lama, to ensure national and ethnic unity and social stability in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, President Xi Jinping has said.
Speaking at the meeting attended by the entire top leadership of China, Xi said the country has to ‘firmly take the initiative’ in the fight against ‘separatism’.
He was addressing a two-day meeting in Beijing focused on TAR and the four other provinces in China–Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai–where Tibetans live.
“We should fight against separatist activities by the Dalai (Lama) group, rely on cadres and people of all ethnic groups, seek long-term policies and take measures that address the root cause,” Xi was quoted as saying at the meeting attended by the six other members of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Politburo, the country’s top decision-making body.
The Dalai Lama has been based in India since 1959 and the issue has remained a diplomatic thorn in bilateral relations though neither New Delhi nor Beijing made much public mention of it.
The Chinese government frequently claims that the Dalai Lama–revered by many Tibetans in China–and his followers are spreading separatism in China, inciting the Tibetans to self-immolate. More than 130 Tibetans have died setting themselves afire in recent years, demanding more freedom for the community and the return of the Dalai Lama to China.
Rights groups based abroad say the Chinese government’s hard-line policies have alienated the community, driving them to protests.
Access to and information flowing out of TAR is tightly controlled by the government making independent verification of news difficult.
The picture usually painted the government is that TAR is going through rapid development and the livelihood of the people has improved vastly.
Xi for example told the closed door meeting that ‘social stability provides the basis for advancing development and prosperity for people from all ethnic groups in Tibet’.
He urged for ‘bettering basic public service and adopting targeted measures to alleviate poverty, solve key problems which lead to poverty and improve living conditions for the impoverished’.