Merkel says goodbye to the Dalai Lama after meeting at the chancellery.
(REUTERS/Markus Schreiber/Pool)
Even before the brutal crack-down in Burma turned the international spotlight on China’s cynical unwillingness to pressure the military junta in neighboring Rangoon, it was German Chancellor Merkel who–by receiving the exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama last Sunday in Berlin–decided to send a clear signal to Beijing emphasizing the importance of protecting fundamental human rights. Merkel was not only the first German chancellor to meet with the Dalai Lama. She also decided to receive him at her official residence for what was billed as “private and informal talks” about the Dalai Lama’s “work as the Buddhist Tibetan religious leader and his commitment to his Tibetan homeland.” Ever since China forcibly annexed its Himalayan neighbor in 1950 and launched a tough campaign of repression against the native Buddhist Tibetans, Beijing has viewed any international red-carpet treatment for the “god king” as a threat to its political legitimacy and territorial integrity. In the run-up to the Merkel-Dalai Lama talks, China had tried hard to prevent the sensitive meeting from happening. Last Friday, for instance, Beijing summoned the newly arrived German ambassador there to warn against the potential negative political and economic fall-out for relations between the two countries. Beijing also canceled several senior-level bilateral meetings during this week’s UN General Assembly opening session in New York for “scheduling reasons.” According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, the meeting “grossly interferes with the internal affairs of China,” “hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and seriously undermines China-Germany relations”. While the Merkel government stressed the peaceful nature of the Dalai Lama’s international campaign to achieve autonomy–though not independence–for Tibet and confirmed its continued commitment to the “One China” policy, the German Chancellor nonetheless seized the opportunity to demonstrate that she is not willing to sacrifice her own political beliefs and principles on the altar of close political and economic ties wi
th a rising China. Merkel’s timing in sending a human rights message to Beijing was carefully chosen, coming just a few weeks after the chancellor’s trip to China (which was overshadowed by reports of PLA cyber attacks against German government computers), and less than a year before the start of the 2008 Olympics. Despite the blustering, Beijing knows too well that it would be counterproductive to make too big of a deal of the Dalai Lama visit, especially since it does not herald any major shift in Germany’s China policy. Just today, the ruling conservative CDU/CSU Bundestag group announced that Chancellor Merkel will give a major major foreign policy address on Asia at a conference in Berlin on October 26. She will leave for another Asia trip right after the speech, thus emphasizing the region’s growing political and economic importance. Domestically, Angela Merkel got rave across-the-board political and media reviews for receiving the Dalai Lama, including from the opposition FDP and Green parties. Only SPD Chairman Kurt Beck, whose party is a member of the ruling Grand Coalition and who would surely like to take Merkel’s post after the next general elections, slightly criticized the chancellor, indicating that he would have chosen a more “neutral ground” for such an encounter. As an editorial in the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung put it:
During the past two weeks or so, Germany seemed to be gripped by a certain “Dalai Lamania” as the Tibetan spiritual leader was on a non-stop political and media tour across the country. For Chancellor Merkel, the meeting in Berlin was also an important opportunity to reach out to centrist voters by once again stressing her personal commitment to the protection of human rights (remember her frank criticism of Russian President Putin in that regard). Traditionally, it had been the SPD party and the Greens who were widely seen as the champions of “soft” issues such as human rights; the tenure of former chancellor and Putin buddy Gerhard Schroeder notwithstanding. Gearing up for the next general elections to be held by the fall of 2009, Merkel is smartly expanding her party’s appeal to the rapidly growing number of swing voters in Germany. One final observation: While the Dalai Lama’s campaign to improve the human rights situation in Tibet in the face of Chinese repression is certainly a worthy cause, it was astonishing to see how otherwise strictly secular politicians from the SPD, Green, FDP, and Left party (and even some CDU folks) bowed down before the “god king,” referring to him as “His Holiness.” It should be pointed out that these are the same people who generally refuse to address Germany’s top Catholic and Protestant leaders Karl Cardinal Lehmann or Bishop Wolfgang Huber with their appropriate titles, opting instead for a more informal, i.e. less respectful, “Herr Lehmann” or “Herr Huber.”
