Dalai Lama threatens to resign
Tibet's spiritual leader says he'll step down from exiled government if violence in his Himalayan homeland worsens. Few believe him, but sense he faces generational friction amid latest unrest.
BEIJING — The Dalai Lama threatened to resign today as the leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile if the violence that has erupted in his homeland over the last week spirals out of control.
The spiritual leader of the Himalayan people made the statement on the day China's top leadership lashed out at him, charging that he has orchestrated Tibet's worst anti-China riots in two decades to sabotage August's Beijing Olympics.
"Please help stop violence from Chinese side and also from Tibetan side," the Dalai Lama pleaded before reporters in Dharamsala, India, the base of his government. "If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign."
While few believe the man revered by followers as a god king is prepared step down, there is a sense that his own advocacy of nonviolence and compromise with the Chinese government has run up against a younger generation of Tibetans looking for a new way out of the long-standing impasse with Beijing.
"His holiness is not young. Time is running out for Tibet. If China keeps on doing what it's [been] doing for the last 50 years, there is this thinking from the young that maybe his holiness' patience is not the solution," said Dalha Tsering, campaign coordinator for the Tibetan community in Britain. "That, however, doesn't mean their allegiance is minimizing; all it means is they are frustrated."
Chinese troops seized control of Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama, who fled the region after a failed rebellion against Beijing in 1959, says he is not seeking independence for his homeland but greater autonomy within China for the Tibetan people.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao today accused him of hypocrisy but left open the door for dialogue if the Dalai Lama recognized Tibet as part of China and not support an independence movement in Taiwan, which Beijing maintains is part of China.
"You should not only look at what he says, but what he does," Wen said, who maintained that Chinese authorities have reacted with extreme restraint to the riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and have long worked to spur the Tibetan economy and support its culture and people.
Critics say China has restricted media coverage of the sometimes brutal security measures it has used to suppress pro-Tibet demonstrations.
"I know a relative who was shot three times because he was holding a Dalai Lama photo and marching toward the army," Tsering said. "If the world doesn't speak up, it will be another Burma," which is also known as Myanmar.
