The 14th Dalai Lama, now 85, has lived in India since he fled Tibet in 1959.
Washington:
China has no theological basis for choosing the next Dalai Lama, according to a senior US diplomat, saying Tibetan Buddhists have successfully chosen their spiritual leader for hundreds of years.
“I went to Dharamshala, India, to speak to the Tibetan community that was gathered there in exile and to tell them that the United States is against China choosing the next Dalai Lama,” he said. said Goodwill Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Samuel D. Brownback. Tuesday in a conference call, recalling his visit to India in October.
“They don’t have the right to do this. They have no theological basis for doing it. Tibetan Buddhists have successfully chosen their leader for hundreds of years or more, and they have the right to do so. now, ”he replied. to a question.
Samuel D. Brownback said the United States maintains that religious communities have the right to choose their own leadership.
“This certainly includes the next Dalai Lama. So we have pushed this back. We will continue to oppose it. We believe it is completely wrong of the Chinese Communist Party to claim that it has this right,” he said. -he told me.
The 14th Dalai Lama, now 85, has lived in India since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a Chinese crackdown on an uprising by local people. The Tibetan government in exile operates from Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. Over 160,000 Tibetans live in India.
Samuel D. Brownback accused China of one of the worst situations of religious persecution in the world today, if not the worst. “It will not help them in their fight against terrorism,” he said, adding that the Chinese are trying to sell to the world that it is an effort to prevent terrorism, but they will create more terrorists.
“The answer to terrorism is not to lock everyone up. The answer to terrorism is religious freedom, allowing people to freely practice their faith, and they won’t fight you so much. If the Chinese weren’t in it. war on faith would have a more open society, but they would also have more contented citizens who seek to practice their faith and be left alone and in peace, ”he said.
He called on China to stop its war on faith, which will not succeed anyway, but against Uyghurs, against Tibetan Buddhists, against the Christian house church, against the Catholic church, against Falun Gong.
“They persecute all faiths. And the biggest one we announced today was this effort to really push back the use of technology to create these virtual police states to persecute religious membership. It’s something they did in Tibet, they are. We want to prevent this from spreading to other countries of the world or spreading further to other countries of the world, ”said Samuel D. Brownback.
