A Beijing-appointed Tibetan Buddhist leader sent by China to attend a conference in Sichuan this month was ignored by ordinary Tibetans who had been told by authorities to turn out to greet him, with only hand-picked officials present to show him respect, Tibetan sources said
Tibet’s Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama in a speech this month slammed what he called foreign interference in Tibetan affairs, saying that “anti-China forces” care nothing for the Tibetan people and only raise issues of religious freedom in order to hinder China’s development
The case of the Panchen Lama, who vanished 24 years ago, has come to represent Beijing’s efforts to “interfere with and undermine Tibetan Buddhist culture,” Kai Mueller of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said on Wednesday at a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland
Zha Luo, director at Beijing-based China Tibetology Research Center, a government-run think tank, told Indian reporters recently that any refusal by India to recognize China’s choice of the next Dalai Lama would hurt ties
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and has since worked to promote religious and cultural autonomy for his people