China launched a new attack on the Dalai Lama’s drive for Tibetan autonomy yesterday, vowing not to compromise with leaders of the Tibetan exile community meeting to debate the future of their movement.
An editorial in the official Tibet Daily newspaper again ruled out the possibility of extending to Tibet the special autonomous status enjoyed by Hong Kong and Macau.
“Any acts to harm or change Tibet’s current basic political system are in diametric opposition to our country’s Constitution and law,” the editorial said.
The former British and Portuguese colonies have retained their own police forces, legal systems and limited democratic governance even after returning to Chinese sovereignty in the late 1990s.
The editorial called the Nobel peace laureate’s “middle way” proposal a deception, saying that it was tantamount to seeking outright independence for the region, which China insists has been part of its territory for 700 years.
Many Tibetans, however, say they were effectively independent for most of that time before Chinese forces invaded shortly after the 1949 communist revolution. The Tibetan leader has consistently said he does not seek to separate Tibet from China but wants the region to be granted control over its internal affairs.
The Dalai Lama’s “so-called ‘middle way’ is a naked expression of ‘Tibet independence’ aimed at nakedly spreading the despicable plot of opposing the tide of history,” the editorial said.
The Tibet Daily is the mouthpiece of the region’s Communist Party committee and the editorial appeared aimed at sending a clear message to exile Tibetans meeting this week that China would not yield in its hardline approach.
Though it did not directly mention the Tibettan gathering, China’s Foreign Ministry has previously dismissed it as meaningless and illegitimate.
The talks in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala — the base of the self-declared government-in-exile — have exposed rifts between the many young Tibetans who advocate a declaration of independence from China and the older guard, who stand by the Dalai Lama’s path of seeking for the region to be granted control over its internal affairs while remaining a part of China.
The divide was sharpened by a March uprising of Tibetans across western China that marked the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in Tibet in nearly two decades.
Last month’s talks between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama produced no progress and in their wake, China has ratcheted up its rhetoric against the Dalai Lama and his proposals. Beijing has sought to portray the spiritual leader as a ruthless autocrat who would carry out ethnic cleansing in Tibetan areas and reintroduce the region’s traditional feudal theocracy.
Piling on the criticism, China’s official Xinhua news agency released an article yesterday attacking the language used by the Dalai Lama’s envoys at the recent talks.
The Tibetans aim to “set up a ‘half independent’ or ‘covertly independent’ political entity controlled by the Dalai clique on one quarter of the Chinese territory,” Xinhua said. “And when conditions are ripe, they will seek to realize ‘complete Tibet independence.’”
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