New Delhi: The US Congress on Monday passed a bill which supports the ‘Rights of Tibetans’ and allows Tibetans to choose a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The US senate passed the bill of ‘The Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020 (TPSA),’ which for the establishment of a US consulate in Tibet’s main city of Lhasa and underlines the absolute right of Tibetans to choose a successor to the Dalai Lama.
After the approval of the US senate – the Central Tibetan Administration said that “The TPSA makes it official United States policy that decisions regarding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama are exclusively within the authority of the current Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhist leaders and the Tibetan people,”
The House of Representatives has already cleared the bill.
To stop the Chinese interference – US said that “Any interference by Chinese government officials will be met with serious sanctions and deemed inadmissible into the United States,”
The spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin on Tuesday criticised the move of USA and said “We urge the US side to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs and refrain from signing into law these negative clauses and acts, lest it further harms our further cooperation and bilateral relations,”
The president of the Central Tibetan Administration Lobsang Sangay described the legislation as a victory for the Tibetan freedom struggle. “We have been pushing for this for the last two years. The move by the US Congress was a tribute to the great legacy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to the courage and solidarity of six million Tibetans inside Tibet,” Lobsang Sangay said.
According to the media report the Dalai Lama, then 23, had crossed into Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang in April 1959 to escape the Chinese that had invaded Tibet nine years earlier and had brutally suppressed the uprising against Beijing’s rule. The Dalai Lama and the thousands of Tibetans who followed him were settled in the Himalayan town of Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh where he has been living in exile ever since. There are over 80,000 Tibetans living in exile in India, 150,000 more around the world particularly in the US and Europe.
Further media report says that “China has been attempting to dismantle Tibetan Buddhism since then. It arrested Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in Tibet, just three days after he was proclaimed as the 11th Panchen Lama, the second highest Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, in May 1995,”
The US law is significant because China has already started the process to identify its version of the reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama. China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor, which many see as a coercive attempt to control Tibet, where ethnic Tibetans make up about 90 percent of the population, a media report said.
The head of the wealthy Karma Kagyu school said that “If the Tibetan people decide to continue with the institution of the Dalai Lama, there could be two Dalai Lamas. Just as there are two Panchen Lamas and two claimants to the title of the 17th Karmapa.
Sangay said “the TPSA sends a loud and clear message to China that Tibet remains a priority for the United States and that it will continue its steadfast support for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the CTA.”
According to the International politics experts – The relations between China and the US are already disturbed and China will never be able to digest the latest move of the USA which supports the rights of Tibetans.
The US and China are already standing against each other on many issues including Trade-war, Coronavirus and others, experts say.
China’s international political experts are expecting that relations between China and the US will change and it will walk on a good track but this move may fall the experts wrong.
-Vinayak barot