JOIN USUS officials' meetings with Dalai Lama's envoys in India irks China
The back-to-back engagements between the United States and the Dalai Lama’s representatives and the Tibetan Government in Exile based in India has irked China.
The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Delhi took to Twitter to protest a meeting between Atul Keshap, acting envoy of the United States to India, and Dalai Lama’s representative Ngodup Dongchung.
“Strongly opposed to repeated provocative acts by the US. Tibetan affairs are purely China's internal affairs that allow no foreign interference,” tweeted Wang Xiaojian, a spokesperson of China’s diplomatic mission in the capital of India. Wang reacted after Keshap posted a picture of him with Dongchung who also serves as a representative of the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGiE) in New Delhi.
“The US supports the religious freedom and the preservation of Tibetans' unique cultural and linguistic identities, and respects the @DalaiLama’s vision for the equal rights of all people,” Keshap had tweeted after his meeting with Dongchung on Tuesday.
When United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken had visited New Delhi on July 28, he also had a meeting with Dongchung — sending out a message to China.
The Dalai Lama set up the TGiE — formally called Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) — on April 29, 1959, just a few weeks after he arrived in India following his escape from Tibet, which had been occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 1950-51. The CTA, which has its headquarters in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, calls itself the “continuation of the government of independent Tibet”.
Beijing, which calls the Dalai Lama a ‘splittist’, in the past pressed the Government of India hard to shut down the TGiE. New Delhi, however, has been allowing it to function, albeit without officially recognising it.
“The so-called ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’ is a separatist political organization with the agenda of pursuing ‘Tibetan independence’. It is completely in violation of China’s Constitution and laws, and is not recognized by any country,” the spokesperson of the communist country’s embassy in New Delhi tweeted on Wednesday. He said that any form of contact between the US and the “Dalai clique” was a violation of the American Government’s commitment to acknowledging Tibet being part of China, to not supporting "Tibetan Independence", and to not supporting attempts to split China.
The US Congress late last year passed the Tibetan Policy and Support Act (TPSA) of 2020, acknowledging the legitimacy of both the Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE) and the TGiE or the CTA. The TPSA 2020, which the then US President Donald Trump signed into law, acknowledged the Central Tibetan Administration as the “legitimate institution reflecting the aspirations” of the Tibetan Diaspora around the world with Sikyong as its President.
Wang on Wednesday said that the US should honour its commitment, stop meddling in China's internal affairs “under the pretext of Tibetan affairs”, and offer no support to the “Tibetan independence” forces to engage in anti-China separatist activities.
The US had hosted the then Sikyong of the TGiE Lobsang Sangay at the State Department and the White House in Washington DC in October and November last year. The US also acknowledged the legitimacy of the election of Penpa Tsering early this year as the successor of Sangay in a global poll that saw participation by exiled Tibetans around the world.