12/09/2009, 00.00
CHINA - TIBET
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Tibetan NGO in Copenhagen: China is using climate emergency to repress us

60 Tibetans arrested in recent days for demanding the release of a Buddhist leader. Beijing: "The Dalai Lama continues to make slanderous accusations against us."

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The Chinese government "wants to use the world's concerns about the environment to justify the colonization of Tibet and forced removal of huge numbers of nomadic herders from the area in which they have lived for centuries." This is the accusation launched today by the non-governmental Free Tibet, at the International Conference on Climate Change being held in Copenhagen.

Meanwhile, the Beijing government has detained about 60 Tibetans from Nyagchuka County for demanding the release of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a well known figure in the local Buddhist sphere who has been held in prison for years under charges of subversion.  Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005, he is believed responsible for bombings that occurred in 2002 in Sichuan province. In any case, the prosecution never presented evidence against him (see AsiaNews.it, 26/01/2005 Death sentence commuted to life for Tibetan monk).

According to Free Tibet, "The Chinese government's policies in Tibet continue to create one crisis after another. Expulsion of nomads, among other things, has resulted in an increased local warming of the tundra, the largest reserve of ice outside the two poles. These glaciers provide water that flows into most rivers of Asia: long before the explosion of global warming, their protection was highly placed on the agenda of the non-governmental organizations dealing with environment.

According to Stephanie Brigden, director of Free Tibet, "China trumpeted its commitment to fighting global warming, but actually uses it as an excuse to violate human rights of thousands of Tibetan nomads. This manner of action is potentially catastrophic: it is time for China to take responsibility for his actions. "

To delegitimize Tibetan demands, Beijing continues for its part, the campaign against the Dalai Lama. A Chinese government representative in charge of dialogue between China and Tibet, yesterday accused the Dalai Lama of having made "defamatory judgments" on the Chinese policy in Tibet. The government in Beijing, said Zhu Weiqun, "knows that the Dalai is not a religious leader, but an advocate of independence who must be stopped."

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