China cranks up blame game, Warns US over interference/ENG

2012. január 12./Phayul.com/TibetPress

DHARAMSHALA, January 12: China warned the United States against using religious incidents as a pretext to interfere in its “domestic affairs”, after Washington said it was “seriously concerned” over the alarming wave of self-immolations in Tibet.

At least 15 Tibetans – monks, nuns, laymen – have set themselves on fire in the past 10 months in Tibet, protesting against China’s continued occupation of Tibet and demanding the return of the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

Three men, including a high reincarnate lama, died in the past week alone after setting themselves ablaze in eastern Tibet.

The U.S. State Department had on Monday said it was seriously concerned by the latest reports of self-immolations in Tibet. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the incidents reflected "enormous anger and enormous frustration" over severe Chinese restrictions on human rights and religious freedom.

In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said the government "firmly opposes making use of religious affairs to interfere in China's domestic affairs."

He also insisted that the government "attaches great importance and safeguards the basic rights of ethnic groups, including their freedom of religious belief."

The state run media in China have also cranked up their propaganda against the Dalai Lama, directly accusing the exiled Tibetan leader for instigating the self-immolations. In recent editorials, the state media went a step further by blaming the West of trying to turn Tibetan Buddhism into a cult similar to Falun Gong, the religious-based sect persecuted by Beijing since the late 1990s.

"China's Tibetan region has been affected by outrageous political influences under the name of religion. This concerns the interests of the Dalai group as well as those of the West," claimed the main editorial in the state-run Global Times.

"The selfishness and ruthlessness of the Dalai group are carefully packaged by the West," the editorial said.

"Hopefully the Dalai group will not become another cult. As time goes by, hopefully the believers of Tibetan Buddhism will finally know the Dalai Lama's true intentions," it added.

The editorials come days after Chen Quanguo, China’s top official in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, while speaking at Lhasa's Sera Monastery on January 7, urged the monks to “unswervingly fight against the separatist activities of the Dalai Lama group”.

Adding to its well-oiled propaganda machinery, Beijing yesterday announced plans to launch its first English language periodical on “Tibetan studies” targeting “global researchers on Tibet and its culture”.

A party official said that the publication will focus on Tibet’s “economy, history, religion, culture, archaeology, language, traditional medicine, art and folklore”.