Tibetan Envoys End Visit to China

By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 6, 2008
BEIJING — Senior envoys of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetans worldwide, announced on Thursday that they had presented Chinese officials in Beijing with a memorandum on “genuine autonomy” for Tibetans living under Chinese rule.
Two senior envoys of the Dalai Lama, Kasur Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, left Beijing on Wednesday. They had arrived in China on Oct. 30 for an eighth round of talks between Tibetan and Chinese officials.
The envoys represent the Tibetan government in exile that is based in the mountain town of Dharamsala in northern India. The envoys returned to India on Thursday and released a written statement in the evening.
The statement did not give further details on the talks or on the memorandum that was presented to Chinese officials, although it seems likely to have set out details of the Dalai Lama’s longstanding call for autonomy within China, rather than independence, a stance that in the past has been met with deep suspicion by Chinese authorities.
Mr. Gyari said in the statement that the envoys had been asked by Tibetan leaders not to discuss the negotiations with the Chinese because a special meeting of Tibetan exiles is to take place later this month. The meeting has been called by the Dalai Lama to discuss the future of Tibet, which has emerged this year as one of the most volatile issues facing the Chinese government.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and has been advocating for autonomy, rather than independence, in what the Chinese now call the Tibet Autonomous Region, a high-altitude desert plateau in western China that is the heartland of the Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama has also said he would like to see real autonomy in other regions of China with significant Tibetan populations. These would include parts of the provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.
The People’s Liberation Army, under orders from Mao Zedong, invaded Tibet in 1950, leading to the annexation of all Tibetan regions by the Communist government.
Despite the eight rounds of talks, China has made no real concessions on its Tibet policy. The Dalai Lama has said in recent weeks that he is ready to accept the fact that he has failed to win true autonomy for his people and now wants other Tibetans to advise on a path forward. The meeting later in November could be a turning point in policies toward China adopted by the Tibetan government in exile.
The Dalai Lama has been under pressure from younger Tibetans to take a more aggressive stand and to veer away from the moderate “middle way” approach toward China that he has long advocated.
Lhasa was engulfed on March 14 by an ethnic riot that Chinese authorities said left at least 18 people dead. Following peaceful protests by monks, angry Tibetans attacked ethnic Han Chinese settlers in Lhasa and set fire to buildings and cars. Protests flared up in other Tibetan areas of China, and the Chinese government responded with a severe crackdown that exile groups say left dozens of Tibetans dead and many more imprisoned.
The Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the March riot to derail the Olympic Games, which took place in August in China. Xinhua, the official Chinese state news agency, reported on Wednesday that 55 Tibetans had received prison sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment for their roles in the March 14 riot.
In the statement released on Thursday, Mr. Gyari said the Tibetan envoys met with various Chinese officials and also visited the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a small area in northern China that has a large population of ethnic Hui Chinese, who are traditionally Muslims.
Mr. Gyari also said the envoys received a briefing on the Chinese Constitution and on a national law concerning regional autonomy.
Mr. Gyari and Mr. Gyaltsen were accompanied on the visit to Beijing by three other senior Tibetan officials. On Thursday morning, after landing in New Delhi, they briefed Samdhong Rinpoche, the elected prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile.