Advertisement
Advertisement
14th Dalai Lama
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
US President Barack Obama (right) meets with the Dalai Lama in the Map Room of the White House last year.

Dalai Lama, Obama due at same event

Pair to take part in a prayer gathering, a move likely to anger the authorities in Beijing who say the Tibetan spiritual leader is a separatist

Angela Meng

US President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama are to both attend the US National Prayer Breakfast in Washington this week, a move likely to elicit an angry response from the Chinese government.

The two met last February, but it is unclear if they will meet face-to-face at the forthcoming event.

The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual gathering for religious leaders.

Obama is scheduled to speak at the event. While the president and the Tibetan spiritual leader could have a chance encounter at the event on Thursday, the White House played down any official engagement between the two.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the White House had no specific meeting with the Dalai Lama to announce.

The Dalai Lama's office in Dharamsala in India did not answer calls asking for comment.

Alka Acharya, a professor of Chinese Studies at the Centre for East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a member of India's National Security Advisory Board, said: "There will be a predictable statement from the US and a predictable reaction from the Chinese.

"The Americans will uphold religious freedom, human rights and diversity and the Chinese will call the Dalai Lama a separatist."

After Obama's last meeting with the Dalai Lama, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui summoned the US charge d'affaires to express the government's strong indignation.

The White House press office released a statement after the meeting saying that the President expressed his strong support for Tibetan culture and "the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People's Republic of China".

Acharya said the US would not question China's state sovereignty or support Tibetan independence, but would uphold the right to freedom of religion.

The US government has also never extended the same courtesies to the exiled Tibetan leader as it does to heads of state, she said.

The Dalai Lama has never been received in the Oval Office, where most foreign leaders meet with the president, and is instead taken to the Map Room.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has met Obama three times.

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an attempted uprising in Tibet, has been called a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and an anti-China separatist by the mainland government, an accusation the exiled leader has repeatedly denied.

More than 130 ethnic Tibetans on the mainland have set themselves on fire in protest against Beijing's rule in recent years.

Ethnic unrest in the area has prompted the authorities to offer up to 300,000 yuan (HK$377,000) for tip-offs about terrorism in the Himalayan region, Xinhua reported yesterday.

"The channels of communication between the Chinese government and Tibetans have been quite active in the past few months, much of it under internal discussion", Acharya said.

"If one looks at Xi's strategy, he cannot be seen as an oppressor, therefore, he may have to demonstrate some kind of accommodation. Both sides will have to agree on certain things".

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Dalai Lama, Obama to be at U.S. event
Post