No response from China on Tibet issue: Sangay

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Dharamsala, Sep 29: China has not given a positive response to the dialogue process to resolve the Tibet issue, Tibetan leader Lobsang Sangay said here Saturday.

“China’s United Front Work Department has not given a positive response to the dialogue process to resolve the issue of Tibet. Instead it’s engaged in misleading the world on Tibet issue and intensify crackdown on Tibetan monasteries and nunneries,” Sangay, who was earlier called prime minister-in-exile, said.

He said these have become the causes for the unprecedented self-immolations by 51 Tibetans in Tibet since February 2009, and 41 of these self-immolators died.

Addressing a prayer service to mourn the death of people due to self-immolations, Sangay said the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), which is based in this hill town, and the Tibetans in exile expressed solidarity with those who have died.

Thousands of Tibetans, including 432 participants of the special general meeting, which was called by the CTA from Sep 25-28 to discuss ways to deal with tragic self-immolations in Tibet, participated in prayers, which were presided over by the elderly monk, the Dalai Lama.

The dialogue between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and the Chinese for genuine autonomy for the people in Tibet has been at a standstill for over two years.

The last round of talks – the ninth – was held in Beijing in January 2010. The government-in-exile submitted an “explanatory” note to the Chinese leadership to clarify its stand on genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people with the Chinese constitution.

China, however, said the two sides had “sharply divided views as usual”.

The Dalai Lama has lived in India since 1959 when he fled his homeland after a failed uprising against the Communist rule.

Some 140,000 Tibetans live in exile around the world, over 100,000 of them in India.

IANS