Friday, October 19, 2007
This is how much China hates the Dalai Lama. So much that when the Tibetan spiritual leader met with President Bush Tuesday in Washington, what we can assume was the most important meeting between two people anywhere in world, there was not a single reporter or cameraman in sight. A day before the United States Congress honors the Dalai Lama for his humanitarian work in a ceremony that the Chinese government has deemed "extremely wrong," the media was kept away from the White House out of respect for China. Because I guess Chinese government doesn’t want its bitter Buddhist enemy seen with a man so well-respected throughout the world as George W. Bush. Reuters reported that Wednesday’s ceremony will be the first time a sitting U.S. president will appear publicly with the Dalai Lama, however the photo above from 2003 somewhat confutes this claim. If you are still confused, photo is right, Reuters is wrong. Bush has met with the Dalai Lama several times before during his presidency, however, Wednesday’s honor will be the first time a sitting U.S. president will bestow an honor upon the religious leader, who China considers to be a separatist and a threat to its sovereignty. China’s foreign minister said the Bush-Lama meeting "seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China’s internal affairs." The Dalai Lama has lived in India since being exiled from China in 1959 for staging an uprising against the Chinese government. In China’s eyes, the legitimization of the Dalai Lama as a world leader fuels the Tibetan freedom movement and lends credence to both Tibetan separatists and the Beastie Boys. And you know what? So what. Let China be "wounded." Nobody demanded that Hu Jintao cancel his photo ops with Omar al-Bashir of Sudan or Burma’s Than Shwe, actual heads of state. The Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader with whom the United States government has every right in the world to meet and it so desires, to honor. China has to deal with the fact that most of the world views the Dalai Lama not as a rebel rouser or nuisance, but as a symbol of religious freedom and Tibet’s rightful leader. China’s leadership might not agree with it, but it might help to accept it. And from an American point of view, anything that helps guide George Bush back onto that Noble Eightfold Path that leads to Nirvana might be worth a little Chinese fury.
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