The Dalai Lama’s call for Tibetan rights while touring Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh has angered China. It has blamed India for permitting the exiled leader to visit the Northeast state that it claims as its own southern Tibet.
“The Indian side allowed the Dalai Lama to visit the disputed
eastern section of the China-India border regardless of China’s grave concerns, and China is strongly dissatisfied with this,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a regular media briefing on Tuesday.
The spokesman said the visit had “fully exposed” the Tibetan spiritual leader’s anti-China efforts that were “doomed to failure”.
Until last week, the foreign ministry had campaigned against the Dalai Lama’s visit, without the rhetoric targeting New Delhi directly.
Beijing has called the Dalai Lama a separatist and even a liar, trying to damage bilateral relations. New Delhi maintains that the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader, free to travel anywhere including Arunachal Pradesh, an integral part of India.
The issue of the Dalai Lama and human rights in Tibet will be taken up next week during talks between US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing. Obama recently postponed his meeting with the Dalai Lama until after his first visit to China.
This week, the official media kept up the pressure on India by widely quoting a Chinese analyst who speculated that the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh was planned under pressure from India.