Representative Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa with the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the latter’s visit to Taiwan
Photo: CTA
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, met Bawa Kelsang Gyaltsen, a representative of the Office of Tibet, during her visit to Taiwan. During the meeting, Representative Gyaltsen raised the issues related to the deteriorating human rights situation and China’s increasingly harsh policy of ethnic, religious, and cultural genocide in Tibet.
Representative Kelsang Gyaltsen informed her of the Chinese Communist Party’s so-called boarding schools technique as bait to coerce Tibetan children to study in boarding schools away from their parents, thereby achieving assimilation of Tibetan culture and religion, among other issues, according to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). Representative Kelsang Gyaltsen also urged the joint organisers of the forthcoming global democracy meeting in October to invite His Holiness the Dalai Lama, stating that doing so would send a clear and strong message to China of global solidarity with Tibet.
Representative Kelsang Gyaltsen spoke of how Tibet has now become a “giant prison”, reiterating the CTS’s stated opinion saying, “Current Chinese Communist Party’s chairperson Xi Jinping’s approach to Tibet, the so-called ‘The Party’s New Generation Policy on the Governance of Tibet’ focuses on the annihilation and assimilation of the Tibetan people, as well as eliminating the Dalai Lama’s influence in Tibet. These measures have stirred up even stronger resistance from the Tibetans.”
He stated that despite the world’s current focus on the Ukraine crisis, the decades-long genocide in Tibet should continue to receive significant attention and support. He expressed lament over the initial lack of support and attention from the international community when Tibet was occupied and asserted that things could have been different if China had received the same international pressure as Russia does now.
As part of her trip to Asia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan on August 2 and met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. According to the Central Tibetan Administration, she visited Taiwan with a delegation of five Democratic lawmakers, despite the threat of retaliation from China and has become the highest-ranking US official to visit the country since 1997. On August 3, House Speaker Pelosi met seven human rights activists, including pro-democracy activist Wuer Kaixi, Taiwanese human rights activist Mr Li Mingzhe, who is being persecuted by China, Mr. Lin Rongji from Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, and Kelsang Gyaltsen, a representative of the Office of Tibet, reported The Tibet Post. Ms Pelosi and the activists participated in a one-hour roundtable discussion on various topics concerning democracy and human rights.
Print
Email