A planned visit by the Dalai Lama has Oslo torn between its will to warm up frozen ties with China and warnings from the public not to compromise its stance on human rights.
Rather than rolling out the red carpet, the Norwegian authorities seem more inclined to make the Tibetan spiritual leader enter through the back door when he arrives on May 7 for the 25th anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize.
“We must be aware that, if the Norwegian authorities receive the Dalai Lama, it will be more complicated to normalize our relations,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said in parliament this week.
The attribution of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) in 2010 revived the long-forgotten anger that Beijing expressed when the Tibetan leader received it, bringing bilateral relations to a new low and prompting Chinese leaders to freeze high-level contacts with their Norwegian counterparts.
Oslo’s attempts to normalize relations with the world’s second-largest economy have since proven fruitless, as China wants to set an example to deter other countries.
On Wednesday, China issued a new warning.
“We are firmly opposed to other countries providing a platform for the Dalai Lama’s activities that aim at dividing China, and we oppose foreign leaders meeting him,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said.
To prevent any escalation, Norwegian parliament President Olemic Thommessen — second only to the king in Norway’s protocol — said he would not meet the Tibetan leader, who was received by US President Barack Obama last month in the White House.
“Our possibilities to promote these values that are so dear to us don’t benefit from maintaining such a hopeless situation as the one we find ourselves in now,” Thommessen told public broadcaster NRK on Tuesday.
Brende said that no decision had been made regarding a possible meeting between a member of the government and the Dalai Lama, with the ministry stressing that the visit is “private.”
The fact that Brende and Thommessen are former leaders of the parliamentary committee for Tibet, the latter as recently as last year, added to the controversy.
As Norway prepares to celebrate the bicentennial of its constitution on May 17, several commentators accused its leaders of betraying Norwegian values and letting China dictate their policy.
“The contrast is huge with all the beautiful words the president of the Parliament and others use in this jubilee year,” said Harald Stanghelle, editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, the most respected Norwegian daily, who criticized the authorities’ “cowardice.”
“Words like democracy and independence, freedom of speech and human rights. The announced visit of the Tibetan [leader] proves that these are but empty words,” he wrote.
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