The Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands sent a letter to members of the Dutch Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee urging them not to meet with Penpa Tsering, President of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), who is currently on an official visit to the Netherlands.

The letter, dated November 4 and addressed to members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Dutch House of Representatives, sought to convey Beijing’s position on Tibet ahead of the CTA President’s scheduled meeting with the committee.

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In the letter, the Chinese Embassy asserted that Tibet, referred to as “Xizang” in the correspondence, had been an “inalienable part of China’s sacred territory since ancient times” and that the Chinese central government had long exercised effective sovereign jurisdiction over the region.

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The embassy …urged the Dutch Foreign Affairs Committee to refrain from providing a platform for what it termed “Tibet independence forces to carry out anti-China activities.”

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Despite the Chinese Embassy’s intervention, the CTA President proceeded with his official engagements in the Netherlands, holding discussions with Dutch government officials and meeting members of the Dutch media to address a range of issues concerning Tibet.

During the visit, he also delivered a keynote address as a “lightning speaker” at the 6th Annual Summit of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), where he called on the international community to strengthen its support for Tibet and take concrete political and diplomatic action against what he described as China’s coordinated efforts to erode Tibet’s historical identity, religious freedom and cultural heritage.

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Chinese missions have engaged in aggressive tactics to dissuade foreign leaders from meeting Tibetan exile leadership including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and CTA leadership in the past.

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