China on Wednesday hit out at a resolution approved by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations criticising “repressive” Chinese policies in Tibet, describing it “an interference in its internal affairs”.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said U.S. Senators had “confused right and wrong” by backing the resolution and it called on them to “abandon their prejudices”, even as officials in Beijing stepped up their attacks on the Dalai Lama over a string of self-immolation protests, the most recent of which took place this week in New Delhi.
The resolution, which has been approved by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and may be approved by the full Senate in the coming weeks, said it “deplores the repressive [Chinese] policies targeting Tibetans” and also mourned the recent self-immolations. It made an urgent plea to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to seek from the Chinese government “a full accounting of the forcible removal of monks from Kirti Monastery” in Sichuan province, where many of the protests have occurred.
Though the resolution is currently at the committee approval phase, it may influence U.S. foreign policy if passed by the Senate. In that eventuality, one clause that may draw the attention of Chinese authorities would be the resolution's plea to the State Department to permit China to open further diplomatic missions in the U.S. only if the U.S. government was permitted to establish a consulate in Lhasa.
The resolution came against the backdrop of at least 30 self-immolation protests by monks and nuns in several Tibetan areas across western China. The protests, monks have said, were directed against what they described as restrictive religious policies.
Chinese officials continued to blame the exiled religious leader the Dalai Lama on Wednesday, which was marked by the government as the 53rd anniversary of the “democratic reform” it introduced in Tibet following the failed uprising of March 1959.
In a televised address, Padma Choling, the governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region, blamed “those people who represent the old Tibet, with the Dalai Lama as their leader, and the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile” for “encouraging all kinds of extreme, violent behaviours to disrupt the peaceful life of the Tibetan people”.
And in a commentary published in the official China Daily , Xiao Jie, a scholar at a government-run think-tank on Tibetan affairs, accused the Dalai Lama of promoting Tibetan independence at the January Kalachakra initiation ceremonies in Bodh Gaya.
“The radical secessionists of the Tibetan Youth Congress volunteered to serve the Dalai Lama and promote "Tibetan independence" during the preparations for the assembly,” he said. “The Dalai Lama's real intentions were clearly exposed in his sermons as he diverted his talks from religion to "the freedom of Tibetans in Tibet"”.
The Dalai Lama has stressed that he did not encourage the acts, although he expressed sympathy with the monks and blamed Chinese policies for triggering the protests.
Mr. Xiao, however, claimed that some activities had “tried to justify and glorify self-immolation”, such as a concert “to commemorate the so-called martyrs’ heroism”. “The whole process was emotionally charged and aimed at inciting people to follow the "noble" cause of self-immolation,” he said.
Several Tibetans who had travelled from China to Bodh Gaya were subsequently detained upon their return and forced to undergo “study sessions” in Lhasa, as The Hindu reported last month.
The sessions were among a series of new measures put in place by authorities in recent months to strengthen management of monasteries and religious life in Tibetan areas, including patriotic education campaigns that call on monks to denounce the Dalai Lama.
At least 30 Tibetans across China have set themselves on fire in the past year to protest religious policies. The latest protests in China were reported last week in Qinghai province, where Jamyang Palden, a 39-year-old monk, and Sonam Thargyal, a 44-year-old farmer, set themselves on fire.
