China: Meeting Dalai Lama a major offence'

Beijing: China on Saturday warned that it will consider as a “major offence” if any country or foreign leader hosts or meets the Dalai Lama as it deems the Tibetan spiritual leader a “separatist” trying to split Tibet from it.

China routinely protests world leaders meeting the 82-year-old Dalai Lama. It also makes it mandatory for all the foreign governments to recognise Tibet as part of China to have diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Zhang Yijiong, executive vice-minister of the United Front Work Department of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), said, “Any country or organisation of anyone to accept to meet with the Dalai Lama, in our view, is a major offence to the sentiment of the Chinese people.”

Without naming India, he said, on the sidelines of the once-in-a-five-year congress of the CPC, that the Dalai Lama fled to the “other country” in 1959, “betraying his motherland and set up his so-called government in exile”. That “so-called government” has the separatist agenda to split Tibet from China, he said.

China had protested when the Tibetan spiritual leader was permitted by India to visit various areas in the Northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh, this year.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule in his Himalayan homeland.