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Why the Dalai Lama is Hopeful
By Jonathan Mirsky
June 21, 2012
“I told President Obama the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are missing a part of the brain, the part that contains common sense,” the Dalai Lama said to me during our conversation in London Wednesday.
The Dalai Lama, with whom I have been talking periodically since 1981, was in an ebullient mood even for him. He was here referring to his meeting with Obama in 2011. I had asked the Dalai Lama about those national leaders throughout the world, from South Africa to Britain, who refuse to hold formal meetings with him because they fear Beijing’s anger. President Obama declined to meet him in 2009, the first rebuff from an American president since the Tibetan leader began visiting Washington in 1991.
The meeting that finally took place in 2011 was in the White House Map Room rather than the Oval Office, after Beijing had warned against such an encounter: “We firmly oppose any foreign official to meet with the Dalai Lama in any form.” In Britain, Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron found other venues for their meetings, far from 10 Downing Street. Two weeks ago Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg held a brief unpublicized meeting with the Dalai Lama who was about to address several thousand admirers in St Paul’s cathedral. All such meetings, including the one at the cathedral, are routinely condemned by Beijing as “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.”
“If these national leaders don’t see me that’s up to them,” the Dalai Lama said. “But slowly Chinese people realize they have been exploited, censored. The Communists tell them they don’t need Western-style democracy and human rights.’”
More: New York Review of Books
June 21, 2012
“I told President Obama the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are missing a part of the brain, the part that contains common sense,” the Dalai Lama said to me during our conversation in London Wednesday.
But it can be put back in. I am hopeful about the new Chinese leadership beginning late this year. The Communist leaders now lack self-confidence, but I have heard from my Chinese friends that after a year or two the new ones will take some initiatives, so more freedom, more democracy.
The Dalai Lama, with whom I have been talking periodically since 1981, was in an ebullient mood even for him. He was here referring to his meeting with Obama in 2011. I had asked the Dalai Lama about those national leaders throughout the world, from South Africa to Britain, who refuse to hold formal meetings with him because they fear Beijing’s anger. President Obama declined to meet him in 2009, the first rebuff from an American president since the Tibetan leader began visiting Washington in 1991.
The meeting that finally took place in 2011 was in the White House Map Room rather than the Oval Office, after Beijing had warned against such an encounter: “We firmly oppose any foreign official to meet with the Dalai Lama in any form.” In Britain, Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron found other venues for their meetings, far from 10 Downing Street. Two weeks ago Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg held a brief unpublicized meeting with the Dalai Lama who was about to address several thousand admirers in St Paul’s cathedral. All such meetings, including the one at the cathedral, are routinely condemned by Beijing as “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.”
“If these national leaders don’t see me that’s up to them,” the Dalai Lama said. “But slowly Chinese people realize they have been exploited, censored. The Communists tell them they don’t need Western-style democracy and human rights.’”
More: New York Review of Books
