NEW DELHI: A group of senior US lawmakers including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi met Wednesday with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile in India, sparking heavy criticism from China.
The bipartisan group of US lawmakers, led by Congressman Michael McCaul and Pelosi, visited the 88-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader at his home base in the northern Indian hill-town of Dharamsala.
Pelosi told crowds of Tibetans it was an “honor” to have met with the Dali Lama, in a speech carried by the government-in-exile’s Tibet TV.
“It is truly a blessing,” Pelosi said.
The visit follows the passage of a bill by the US Congress that seeks to encourage Beijing to hold talks with Tibetan leaders — frozen since 2010.
“This bill is a message to the Chinese government that we have clarity in our thinking and understanding in the issue of the freedom of Tibet,” she said.
Pelosi said the bill was “soon to be signed” by US President Joe Biden.
Ahead of the visit, China’s embassy in New Delhi criticized the meeting, saying the Dalai Lama was “not a pure religious figure, but a political exile engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion.”
Many exiled Tibetans fear Beijing will name a rival successor to the Dalai Lama, bolstering control over a land it poured troops into in 1950.
The Dalai Lama was just 23 when he escaped the Tibetan capital Lhasa in fear for his life after Chinese soldiers eviscerated an uprising against Beijing’s forces, crossing the snowy Himalayas into India.
He stepped down as his people’s political head in 2011, passing the baton of secular power to a government chosen democratically by some 130,000 Tibetans around the world.
“The democracy of the diaspora of the Tibetans in exile is very important to us,” Pelosi said.
Penpa Tsering, the sikyong or head of that government, said it does not seek full independence for Tibet, but rather to pursue a long-standing “Middle Way” policy seeking greater autonomy and “to resolve the Sino-Tibet conflict through dialogue.”
But Beijing’s embassy accused the Tibetan administration of seeking to break away.
“We urge the US side to fully recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the Dalai group,” the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in India wrote on social media late Tuesday.
It reiterated its oft-repeated position that the high-altitude territory “has always been part of China since ancient times.”
US lawmakers’ visit to Dalai Lama sparks China criticism
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US lawmakers’ visit to Dalai Lama sparks China criticism
- Lawmakers led by Congressman Michael McCaul and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the Buddhist spiritual leader at his home base in the northern Indian hill-town of Dharamsala
Germany’s Merz urges ‘peaceful coexistence’ a year after deadly market attack
- The market attack happened during campaigning for legislative elections — one of several carried out by migrants that fed into a fierce debate about immigration and security in Germany
MAGDEBURG, Germany: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Saturday called for “peaceful coexistence” as the country marked the first anniversary of a deadly car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in eastern Germany.
Merz addressed a church ceremony in the city of Magdeburg, where the December 20, 2024, attack killed six and wounded more than 300 others.
“May we all find, today in this commemoration, comfort and peaceful coexistence, especially as Christmas approaches,” he told those gathered at the Protestant Johanniskirche (St. John’s Church), near the site of the attack.
Germany was still “a country where we show unconditional solidarity — especially when injustice prevails — standing shoulder to shoulder wherever violence erupts,” he added.
While the market reopened on November 20, guarded by armed police and protected by concrete barricades, it remained closed on Saturday out of respect to the victims of last year’s attack.
Saudi man Taleb Jawad Al-Abdulmohsen, 51, is currently on trial for the attack. He has admitted to plowing a rented SUV through the crowd in an attack prosecutors say was inspired by a mix of personal grievances, far-right and anti-Islam views.
Merz’s speech came eight months before regional elections, with the far-right AfD riding high in opinion polls in Saxony-Anhalt state, of which Magdeburg is the capital.
The market attack happened during campaigning for legislative elections — one of several carried out by migrants that fed into a fierce debate about immigration and security in Germany.
On December 13, German police said they had arrested five men suspected of planning a similar vehicle attack on a Christmas market in the southern state of Bavaria.
Police and prosecutors said they had detained an Egyptian, three Moroccans and a Syrian over the alleged plot.
