Reportage – 2007

Dalai Lama wants to teach in China

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 10 March 2007 — The Dalai Lama expressed his wish to be able to visit China on a pilgrimage and give teachings to Chinese there to help create a meaningful Chinese society based on spiritual values.

President Hu Jintao’s continued call for a harmonious society is laudable, but such a society would be realized only through freedom of expression, truth, justice and equality, the Dalai Lama said on the occasion of the forty-eighth anniversary of the Tibetan people’s peaceful uprising in Lhasa in 1959.

There is no change in his Middle-Way approach policy to resolve the Tibetan issue.

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said he is not seeking independence, but autonomy for Tibet. However, China habitually denounces him as a “separatist” trying to split Tibet from the Chinese “motherland”.

“We have no hidden agenda in this policy.”

The Middle-Way policy has been pursued consistently and sincerely for the past twenty-eight years to address the immediate and long-term interests of both Tibetans and Chinese, peaceful co-existence in Asia and protection of the environment.

Direct contacts between the two sides were resumed in 2002, and five rounds talks with the representatives of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials were held since then, but have yielded no results so far.

The most important reason behind his call for national regional autonomy for all Tibetans is to achieve genuine equality and unity between the Tibetans and Chinese by eliminating Han chauvinism and local nationalism.

He feels that the Middle-Way policy will contribute to the country’s stability through mutual help, trust and friendship between the two nationalities and to the maintenance of rich Tibetan culture and language.

Speaking about the railways that became operational in July 2006 in Tibet, he said, “Tibet has seen a further increase in Chinese population transfer, deterioration of its environment, misuse and pollution of its water, and exploitation of its natural resources, all causing huge devastation to the land and all those who inhabit it.”