Mongolia cut short a lecture tour due to be given by the Dalai Lama, a government minister said yesterday, under pressure from China, which brands Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader a dangerous separatist.
Ulan Bator restricted the Dalai Lama to just one lecture yesterday, Mongolian Transportation Minister Battulga Khaltmaa told reporters following a Cabinet meeting.
However, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s planned talk yesterday at the Mongolian capital’s new 4,000-seat Buyant-Ukhaa sports complex, which was constructed using Chinese aid, went ahead despite government efforts to move the lecture to a less controversial location.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) said Beijing had made “stern representations” to the government in Ulan Bator about the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
“We have always opposed any country providing a platform for the Dalai Lama to engage in activities to split China in any form,” he told a regular press briefing yesterday. “The Dalai Lama always uses the opportunity of furtive visits to publicize Tibetan independence, smear the Chinese government and play up issues related to Tibet.”
The Dalai Lama, fresh from a visit to Japan, arrived in the Mongolian capital on Monday for a three-day lecture tour at the invitation of a Buddhist group. He denies being a separatist, saying he only seeks autonomy for his homeland.
Choijamtsa, the head monk at Mongolia’s Gandan-Tegchilen monastery, which organized the visit, said organizers remained determined to go ahead with the planned lectures.
“This is Mongolian territory and Mongolian property and we are going to do it even if others oppose it,” he said.
The Dalai Lama’s visit comes amid growing concern about China’s hardline rule in ethnically Tibetan parts of the country.
At least 11 Tibetans have set themselves ablaze this year in the western Chinese province of Sichuan in protest against government controls on their religion and culture.
Beijing has blamed the Dalai Lama for encouraging unrest, but the spiritual leader said the situation was caused by Chinese policies in the region, which amounted to “cultural genocide.”
Mongolia, landlocked between China in the south and Russia in the north, has seen a rapid revival of Tibetan Buddhism since the collapse of the Soviet-backed communist government in 1990, and the Dalai Lama is recognized as one of the country’s spiritual leaders.
China has been accused by human rights groups of using its growing economic clout to pressure trading partners into refusing visits by the Dalai Lama.
His plans to visit South Africa earlier this year were canceled amid accusations the government had refused to process his visa.
Mongolia won its political independence from China in 1912, but China did not recognize its sovereignty until 1946 and many in Mongolia are concerned about Beijing’s growing economic hegemony.
Mongolia’s booming, mining-dependent economy is almost completely reliant on its southern neighbor, with 90 percent of its exports going to China in the first half of this year.
During the Dalai Lama’s previous tour of Mongolia in 2002, China retaliated by closing the border rail crossing for two days, leaving 500 passengers stranded and severing one of the country’s few links with the outside world.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS