Fifty years after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, the US is still searching for how to support the spiritual leader who commands enormous respect but is up against a rising China.
The US once covertly funneled weapons to Tibetan guerrillas — despite unease by the Dalai Lama himself — and has long criticized Beijing’s policy. But a consensus is emerging to nudge China gently.
John Kenneth Knaus was an officer for the CIA as it trained Tibetan insurgents and dropped arms in the Himalayan territory — an effort the US gave up in 1968 as it became clear the Chinese were fully in charge.
“Was it worth it? These are questions that old men ask themselves,” Knaus, now 85 and retired from the CIA, said meditatively at his home in suburban Washington. “I’d like to think so, obviously. I think it’s really a typical American thing, support for the underdog.”
But Knaus was surprised that the Dalai Lama gave him a cool reception when they first met face-to-face in 1964.
“I didn’t get it. I was going there practically as a convert, a disciple — I knew several hundred of his people, these kids, and I loved them — and I was disappointed,” Knaus said. “It took me some time before I realized that to him, I represented the whole problem — we were providing arms to his people, we were in a sense sustaining violence, which he simply just by definition could not support.”
The Dalai Lama first traveled to the US in 1968 and has since become a regular visitor, addressing packed crowds on spirituality and helping spark a worldwide surge of interest in Buddhism.
To China’s fury, the Dalai Lama has gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the 74-year-old monk has not succeeded in returning to Tibet, where China has poured in extra troops and forbidden any public support for the Dali Lama, who it accuses of separatism.
The US has also changed its tone. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Beijing last month, said Tibet and other human rights concerns would take a back seat in US-China relations in order to collaborate on issues such as fighting the global economic crisis.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS