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China and India tensions up again over Dalai Lama
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Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Less than a month after tensions rose between India and China over the latter's territorial claims in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, India has announced it will bar foreign media from a trip by the 14th Dalai Lama, the de jure head of state of Tibet, to a monastery in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, territory of which is claimed by — you guessed it — China.
The Dalai Lama had fled Tibet when Chinese forces invaded, occupied, and later annexed the country, and he had passed through Arunachal Pradesh along the way to Dharamsala, where he currently resides. Specifically, he had fled via the monastery he is planning now to visit.
The city in which that monastery is situated, Tawang, is claimed by China. Andrew E. Mathis
It is apparently not enough for the Chinese government to invade and annex another country and exile its leader. Instead, apparently it must also lie about the situation in Tibet today, as well as try to prevent the Tibetan leader from coming anywhere near Chinese territory.
The question to ask, perhaps, is why this man, who is a pacifist, scares the Chinese government so much. Perhaps it's because he is a living, breathing example of one of the most brutal military occupations currently taking place — far more brutal than the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and far more costly in terms of lives lost.
And why does India kowtow to Chinese pressures over the Dalai Lama? Because China has never shrunk from using force, whether it has been against India over territory, against Tibet or Xinjiang, or against its own population when it gets out of line (e.g., Tiananmen Square).
China is the 800-pound gorilla of Asia, which sits anywhere it wants. Until its unreasonable demands are not caved in to, it will remain that way.
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