NEW DELHI: Fearful of both hardliners in the Chinese leadership and young Tibetans eager to challenge Beijing with violence, the Dalai Lama appealed today to China his own followers and the West to help save Tibetan culture from annihilation.
*The world community has a responsibility to preserve one of its ancient cultures,” the Dalai Lama said in an interview during a brief stay in New Delhi. He is planning to take that message to Europe next month and to the United States this summer.
Recent violence in Tibet surrounding the 30th anniversary of an uprising against the Chinese in March 1959 and China’s subsequent imposition of martial law on the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, concerns the Dalai Lama for several reasons, he said: Chinese actions are spurring more radical responses from Tibetans, and Tibetans in tum are in danger of inviting large-scale military intervention.
Buddhist Tibet now faces many threats, he said from a loss of language, art and traditional dress to a destruction of the country’s environment from what many Tibetans believe are Chinese nuclear installations or waste dumps in or near Tibet. He offered no proof for the environmental charge. “You look at our Tibetan refugees, as well as people inside Tibet,” the Dalai Lama said in English, and despite their hardships on their face there is peace, there is joy. That is something quite precious. This culture is worth saying”.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 7, 1989
