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.
…
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.
…
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.”
…
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.
…
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.
…
I was curious why the Chinese would say this about people from their own government so I looked up CTA in Wikipedia and found this:
The Central Tibetan Administration (Tibetan: བོདབུས་བོད་མིའི་སྒྲིག་འཛུགས།་, Wylie: Bod mi’i sgrig 'dzugs, THL: Bömi Drikdzuk, IPA: [pʰỳ.mìː ʈìʔ.tsùʔ], lit. ‘Tibetan People’s Exile Organization’)[1] is the government-in-exile of Tibet, based in Dharamshala, India.[2] It comprises a judiciary branch, a legislative branch, and an executive branch, and offers support and services to the Tibetan exile community.
…
In October 1998, The Dalai Lama’s administration stated that it had received US$1.7 million a year during the 1960s from the Central Intelligence Agency.[15]
In 2002, the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 was passed in the U.S.[16][17] In 2016, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded a grant of US$23 million to CTA.[18]
So this is like a Donbas gov’t strucure living outside of Ukraine, funded by Russia, going around the world to represent Donbas. I can see how the Ukranian embassy might have a problem with them talking to Dutch gov’t officials.
Posting from the toilet huh
If Ukraine had surrendered without a fight, it would have been just another Tibet (ok, one difference, russia recognized Ukraine’s independence in 1993, unlike China, which never recognized the independence of Tibet). This is what nobody in Europe wanted and thankfully did not happen, because supporting govs in exile after the country has been erased doesn’t achieve much (which makes these types of Chinese political pressures petty and pointless as well)
Except that Donbas doesn’t have a government in exile because it’s never been a sovereign country. Maybe try a less tankie-like analogy.
This is the weirdest whataboutism I have read in a long time, and that’s not easy here on Lemmy.
What? This is the Russian government not liking us for talking to Chechnyans.
Yeah, it’s like that too.
Not every comparison is a good one.
