Beijing rejects historic offer of Dalai Lama talks
China vows to 'crush and smash' Tibet protests
Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama arrives for a prayer teachings in New Delhi. MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images
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China has defied international calls for it to hold talks with the Dalai Lama and pledged to intensify its brutal crackdown on Tibetan protests against its rule.
An editorial in yesterday's People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, promised to "resolutely crush the conspiracy of sabotage and smash Tibet independence forces''.
Gordon Brown said last week that Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, had assured him that China would to talk to the Dalai Lama if he agreed to abandon support for independence and renounced violence. But Tibet's exiled spiritual leader has already said he supports autonomy, rather than independence, and has condemned the violence.
Foreign journalists are barred from the region, but a massive military presence appears to have ended the protests, in which the Chinese say 19 people died. The Tibetan government in exile puts the death toll at 99. A further 1,000 people were reportedly detained.
On Friday, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, met the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and described the situation in Tibet as a "challenge to the conscience of the world''.
But the sheer violence of the protests in Lhasa, during which ethnic Chinese people were attacked, suggests the Dalai Lama's influence over younger Tibetans is not as strong as it once was. "I think his influence is waning in the sense that some young people know so little about him,'' Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of Students for a Free Tibet said.
"There is still a huge reverence for the Dalai Lama, but in the more remote areas, people's education is so poor that they don't really understand the whole political situation.''
Young Tibetans, who are resentful that Han Chinese have benefited most from state investment, led protests in Lhasa last week.
Last Tuesday night, 100 students at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing held a candle-lit prayer vigil on campus. It ended with 15 of the students being led away in handcuffs.
"It was just a group of Tibetans praying, but it was organised so the Chinese freaked out,'' said an American teacher at the university.
With the Olympic torch relay starting next month, its progress around the world will be marked by protests that will maintain the pressure on Beijing to negotiate with the Dalai Lama. "We're organising to have a presence during the torch relay,'' said Gans Willen den Besten, the European campaign co-ordinator for the International Campaign for Tibet. "We'll be holding pictures of the people who died during the protests."
© Telegraph
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