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Dalai Lama rejects call for Tibet supporters to shut up

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said yesterday he supported China’s hosting of the Summer Olympics, but insisted that nobody had the right to tell protesters demanding freedom for Tibet “to shut up.”

“We are not anti-Chinese. Right from the beginning, we supported the Olympic Games,” he told reporters outside Tokyo on a stopover on a trip to Seattle. “I really feel very sad the government demonizes me. I am just a human, I am not a demon.”

He said that if the situation improves, he would even be willing to attend the Olympics’ opening ceremony.

“If things improve and the Chinese government starts to see things realistically, I personally want to enjoy the big ceremony,” he said.

Protests have been held in cities around the world in a show of sympathy for Tibet, where anti-government riots erupted last month.

San Francisco

The Olympic torch relay has faced massive demonstrations, most recently in San Francisco.

The Dalai Lama said the demonstrators had the right to their opinions, though he called for nonviolence.

“The expression of their feelings is up to them,” he said. “Nobody has the right to tell them to shut up. One of the problems in Tibet is that there is no freedom of speech.”

“Autonomy [in Tibet] is just in name, it is not sincerely implemented. The crisis is the expression of their [Tibetans’] deep regret,” he said.

The Japanese government has been relatively quiet about the violence in Tibet and, out of deference to Beijing, does not deal officially with the Dalai Lama.

Tokyo does, however, grant visas to the exiled Buddhist leader, who has visited Japan fairly frequently. No meetings were planned between the Dalai Lama and government officials although the wife of former prime minister Shinzo Abe greeted him on his stopover en route from India.

He is to spend two weeks in the US.

More than a dozen Buddhist monks protested on Wednesday in front of visiting journalists at a monastery in western China to call for the return of the exiled Tibetan leader.

The monks, whose numbers grew to about two dozen during the 10-minute incident, shouted slogans in Tibetan in an outer courtyard as journalists entered a prayer hall at the Labrang monastery in western Gansu Province bordering Tibet.

allegation

The incident followed a similar interruption during a closely scripted government media tour of Tibet’s capital of Lhasa two weeks ago to view damage from the anti-government riots that erupted there last month.

The Dalai Lama said he is not behind the unrest and called Chinese claims that he is the mastermind “a serious allegation.”

“”Some in the leadership consider Tibetan Buddhism is a source of separatism,” he said, adding that Beijing had reacted to the protests with “violent suppression.”
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