China blasts Dalai Lama's speech

The Dalai Lama has long been a focus of Chinese ire, and even more so after he met U.S. President Barack Obama last month, drawing condemnation from Beijing, which calls the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader a dangerous separatist.

In an address on Wednesday marking 51 years since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama referred to Xinjiang as “East Turkestan,” the name given to it by pro-independence exiles.

The region is populated by the ethnic minority Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking largely Muslim people.

“This exposes and proves his intent on splitting up China and wrecking ethnic unity,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular news conference on Thursday, responding to a question about the Dalai Lama's comments.

“The Dalai distorts the true situation in Tibet, and attacks and insults the central government's policies in Tibet, to trumpet his separatist claims of independence or semi-independence,” Qin said.

The Dalai Lama also said Beijing had put monks and nuns “in prison-like conditions,” making “monasteries function more like museums ... to deliberately annihilate Buddhism.”

Protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule in March 2008 gave way to torrid violence, with rioters torching shops in Tibet's regional capital, Lhasa, and turning on residents, including Han Chinese and Hui Muslims.

At least 19 people died in the unrest, which sparked waves of protest across Tibetan areas ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Pro-Tibet groups abroad say more than 200 Tibetans have died in a subsequent crackdown across the region. Beijing has denied that and said it used minimal force.

“In Tibet, people can believe whatever they want as long as it is legal. The government won't interfere. Instead it will help people solve problems along the way,” said the vice mayor of Lhasa, Jigme Namgyal, according to the China Daily.

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