5 months ago
17
KULLU: Former US house speaker
Nancy Pelosi
, leading a high-level congressional delegation, met the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala Wednesday and issued a stern message to Chinese
Prez Xi Jinping
. Highlighting the contrast between Xi and the
Tibetan
spiritual leader's legacy, she said: "His Holiness, the Dalai Lama with his compassion, purity of soul, and love, will live for a long time and his legacy will live forever.
But, you, the President of China, you'll be gone and nobody will give you credit for anything."
Pelosi condemned China's efforts to purge Tibetan culture "by reducing the use of Tibetan language". She said: "Ethnic Han population is being assimilated with the Tibetan population in Tibet. We have seen in Tibet that the Chinese govt is trying to educate Tibetan children in the Chinese way to reduce the knowledge of the Tibetan language... They (China) are trying something that we cannot let them get away with."
Addressing a small group of Tibetan residents and officials of Central Tibetan Administration in McLeodganj, Pelosi announced that
Prez Joe Biden
would soon sign the
Resolve Tibet Act
, a bipartisan bill aimed at pressuring China to resolve the Tibet dispute. "Things have changed. The passage of this bill is a message to the Chinese govt that we have clarity in our thinking and our understanding of this issue of the freedom of Tibet. This legislation would soon be signed by President Biden," she said.
House foreign affairs committee chairman Michael McCaul affirmed that US would not allow China to interfere with the Dalai Lama's succession. According to him, the delegation had received a warning from Chinese Communist Party not to visit the Dalai Lama. "They sent a letter in which they repeated their false claim that Tibet has been a part of China since the 13th century. But we did not let the CCP intimidate us.
