In an address marking 51 years since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama referred to Xinjiang as “East Turkestan,” the name given to it by pro-independence exiles. The region is populated by an ethnic minority Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking largely Muslim people.“Let us also remember the people of East Turkestan who have experienced great difficulties and increased oppression,” he told about 3,000 Tibetans in Dharamsala, the northern Indian hill town where he has lived for five decades.
“I would like to express my solidarity and stand firmly with them”. Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have waged a heavy-handed campaign against what China calls violent separatist activity by Uighurs. Ethnic violence there last year between Uighurs and majority Han Chinese led to at least 200 deaths.
The Dalai Lama’s comments will almost certainly rile Beijing, which reviles the Nobel Peace Prize winner as a separatist and says he foments violence. The Dalai Lama denies both charges, saying he merely seeks genuine autonomy for the remote region. In Dharamsala, thousands of exiled Tibetans, including maroon-robed monks, nuns and many Westerners, marked the day with a march carrying blue-yellow-red Tibetan flags and banners with anti-China messages.
In neighboring Nepal, police detained about a dozen Tibetan protestors when they tried to storm a Chinese consulate office in the capital Kathmandu. The protestors, who shouted “Free Tibet,” were dragged away by riot police to waiting vans. In a separate incident, dozens of Tibetan refugees protested against China after prayer meetings inside a Buddhist monastery. Reaching out to Tibetans working for the Chinese government, the Dalai Lama said: “I invite Tibetan officials serving in various Tibetan autonomous areas to visit Tibetan communities living in the free world, either officially or in a private capacity, to observe the situation for themselves.”
