» 03/11/2010 16:41 CHINA - TIBET The Dalai Lama "close to the Uyghurs' scares Beijing The Chinese central government and the administration of Tibet strongly attack the speech given yesterday by the Buddhist leader: "It distorts reality and foments separatism within China."
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - In Tibet, "there is no serious problem, despite what the Dalai Lama says." This is the declaration of the new president of the Autonomous Region of China Padma Choling, refuting accusations made yesterday by the Tibetan leader in exile, according to who Beijing “is trying to wipe out Buddhism. " Yesterday, on the 51st anniversary of the uprising of 1959 and the second anniversary of the 2008 protests that occurred in many parts of China that is home to Tibetan people, there were no reported incidents.
"In Lhasa - said Padma, the so-called " hawk " of the Tibetan Administration - you can see monks and nuns everywhere. In Tibet there are about 1,700 religious sites home to 46 thousand monks."
In his speech the Nobel Peace Laureate accused the Chinese central government of having reduced the monks to a state of "semi-slavery" and expressed his support for the peoples of Eastern Turkestan - the Uyghur, considered a separatist group by Beijing - and for those intellectuals who criticize the regime. This is a clear reference to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident author of "Charter '08" who has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
The regional president criticized the Dalai Lama for having called the Chinese region of Xinjiang "East Turkistan", using the term coined by local anti-Chinese nationalists. “He should not foment rebellion in our country", said the local leader. According to Tibetan exiles, about 200 people died in the 2008 protests while the government says that the victims were "little more than twenty."
The central government has also attacked the Buddhist leader. According to the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing, Qin Gan, "the Dalai Lama destorts" the real situation in Tibet. Furthermore, according to Qin, his support for the Uyghur "is a demonstration of his desire to harm the national unity of China and his separatism".
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