Dalai Lama, Obama to Appear at Washington Religious Gathering
2015.02.04
U.S. President Barack Obama may do little more than rub shoulders with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at a large religious freedom gathering in Washington on Thursday, but even that small gesture has incensed China and inspired the Tibetan exile community.
Obama will address the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event held on the first Thursday of February, and the 79-year-old Dalai Lama will be among more than 3,000 people attending the gathering from around the world.
White House officials have taken pains to point out that Thursday’s gathering will not feature a one-on-one meeting with the exiled Tibetan leader. The two men have met three times during Obama’s presidency, with China issuing a particularly stern rebuke to Obama a year ago after their most recent meeting.
"As he has done in the past, the President will see many religious leaders at the event, but we don't have any specific meeting with the Dalai Lama to announce," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement last week.
"The President is a strong supporter of the Dalai Lama's teachings and preserving Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic traditions," said the statement.
The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his advocacy for Tibet in the country and around the world. He retired from his role as political head of the Tibetans in March 2011, and enjoys wide celebrity for his spiritual teachings and writings.
Beijing opposition
China, which views the Dalai Lama as a separatist bent on ending more than six decades of Chinese rule in the vast Himalayan region of Tibet, was quick to denounce this week’s potential meeting with Obama.
"China is opposed to any nation or government using the Tibet issue to interfere in China's domestic affairs, and opposed to any country's leader meeting with the Dalai Lama in any manner," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily news briefing on Feb. 2.
Beijing in the past has punished foreign governments that have met the Dalai Lama by cancelling meetings or trade delegations.
In his speech at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast, Obama mentioned Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang as examples of religious believers suffering repression.
Prayer meeting hailed
The Tibetan National Congress (TNC), a political movement launched in February 2013 by exiled Tibetans, hailed Thursday’s prayer meeting, which followed Obama’s summit in India last month with Narendra Modi at which concerns about Chinese policies in the region were discussed.
Any encounter with Obama in Washington would be only the second public appearance by a U.S. President with the Dalai Lama, following George W. Bush’s awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal to the globetrotting Tibetan Buddhist monk in 2007.
“This is indeed recognition of Tibet’s importance as a strategic and moral issue,” said TNC Vice President Migmar Dolma.
The Washington-based NGO Freedom House last week named Chinese-ruled Tibet among the 12 “worst of the worst” countries or territories in the world in a ranking of global political rights and civil liberties.
Sporadic demonstrations challenging Chinese rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008, with 136 Tibetans to date setting themselves ablaze to oppose Beijing’s rule and call for the return of the Dalai Lama.