Dalai Lama admits his death would set back Tibetan movement

Dalai Lama admits his death would set back Tibetan movement
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

NEW DELHI, OCT 11: Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fears his death would prove "a great setback" for the Tibetan freedom movement, with China seeking to control the choice of his reincarnation.

In an interview to be published in the latest issue of Asiaweek

magazine, the 65-year-old Dalai Lama said his death would inevitably have a strong impact on the Tibetan people inside and outside his homeland. "It will certainly be a great setback," he said in the northern Indian hill station of Dharamsala -- the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

"But our struggle is for the six million Tibetans; their rights, their welfare, their future. "This is a struggle of a nation to survive. Whether one particular leader remains or not, the nation will carry on the struggle." One particular concern voiced by the Dalai Lama was the role of the boy picked by the Chinese leadership as the Panchen Lama -- the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism who is charged with selecting the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama recognised another boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995, but his choice was spirited away by the Chinese authorities and has been kept in a secret location ever since. "I made it clear that if I passed away, the (Dalai Lama's) reincarnation would logically come from outside Tibet, in a free country," the Dalai Lama said. "But China will choose a boy as the next Dalai Lama, though in reality he is not." In recent years, Beijing has frozen all contacts with Tibet's spiritual leader, but the Dalai Lama said he had not given up hope of a breakthrough in his lifetime.

"The possibility is still there," he said. "Sooner or later, China will become a more open society. More freedom must come." Two weeks ago, the Tibetan government-in-exile issued a 45-page report warning that China's refusal to negotiate with the Dalai Lama could transform the Tibetan movement's policy of non-violence into one of unrestrained confrontation. "Till now, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has been a moderating influence on the more radical elements of the Tibetan movement," the report said.

"By ignoring him, the Chinese leaders are set on a head-long collision course with an angrier form of Tibetan nationalism." Chinese troops entered Tibet in October 1950 and the Dalai Lama, who fled to India following an abortive uprising against communist rule in 1959, has been accused by Beijing of being a "separatist" attempting to split China.