China says Dalai Lama is Public Enemy Number One

By Graham Henderson / October 15, 2016;

Photo:David McNew (AFP/File)

A recent trip to France has put His Holiness the Dalai Lama back on the Chinese government’s radar.While there he addressed the European Union, resulting in renewed condemnation from

Chinese authorities who accuse him of being a separatist. According to a number of sources, His Holiness is now viewed as the biggest threat to Chinese unity and countering him has become the country’s “highest priority.”

The renewed campaign against the Dalai Lama is being led by Tibet party secretary Wu Yingjie who is the highest ranking Chinese official in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Wu and other Communist party officials accuse the Dali Lama of subversion and according to Reuters News Agency, there are suggestions that “Wu will ratchet up the government’s already hard-line approach in the devoutly Buddhist region which is prone to anti-Chinese unrest.”

That His Holiness seeks to spread disunity in China and Tibet is highly contested. Countering the views of the Chinese government are a variety of human rights groups, exiles from both China and Tibet and the Dalai Lama himself. They maintain that Tibetan rights – cultural, religious and linguistic – are being abused by the Chinese and that the Dali Lama seeks genuine autonomy to protect those right`s, not to separate Tibet from China.

There are Chinese too who do not believe the government’s claims. Former member of the Chinese foreign ministry Dr. Han Linchcao made the statement: “Contrary to what the Chinese Communist Party says in their propaganda, the Dalai Lama is no separatist,” maintaining that his proposed solution – The Middle Way Approach, “is opposed to separatism.”

The dissident further stated that China’s scornful response to the Dalai Lama’s peaceful resolve will only push to “radicalise moderate Tibetans and force them onto the path of Tibetan independence.” If he is right, it will be one more problem to add to China’s already extensive list; one that includes poverty, language barriers and development clashing with the traditional herding lifestyle.