Speaking of China, no instance of Beijing’s brutality is more striking than its oppression of the Tibetan people. The depth of Chinese Communist hatred for the Dalai Lama — spiritual leader of that captive nation and of millions of Buddhists around the world — can be gauged by the virulence of Beijing’s propaganda. Xinhua, the Chinese “news service,” last year described the 1989 winner of the Nobel peace prize as an “executioner with honey on his lips and murder in his heart” who used “30 human heads and 80 portions of human blood and flesh each year as sacrificial offerings when he held a religious service in India to curse the People’s Liberation war.”
The depth of America’s kowtowing to Beijing will be gauged by the reception extended to the Dalai Lama, who is in Washington for three days this week. Friends of Tibet have urged President Clinton to meet with the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office and hope the Tibetan leader will be invited to address a joint session of Congress, following in the footsteps of such previous Nobel laureates as Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa. The Chinese government has let Washington officials know that it would disapprove of any such gesture.
