BEIJING
A senior Chinese official has accused the Dalai Lama of a "dual betrayal" of his country and faith, state media reported Wednesday.
Zhu Weiqun, head of the religious affairs committee of the advisory body to the Chinese parliament, reiterated that the next Dalai Lama – the head of Tibetan Buddhism – should be chosen by the Chinese government.
"The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has to be endorsed by the central government, not by any other sides including the Dalai Lama himself," Zhu said, quoted by Xinhua news agency.
The current Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, has said the title could end with his death while China says the tradition, by which a senior lama’s soul is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death, must continue with a Beijing-selected appointee.
In 1995, the Dalai Lama named a boy in Tibet as the reincarnation of the previous Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The boy was put under house arrest and another installed in his place by Beijing.
Speaking to reporters at the annual parliamentary session in Beijing, Zhu added: "Politically speaking, he has betrayed his homeland… Religiously speaking, he has betrayed Tibetan Buddhism and the succession system of the Dalai Lama.”
Zhu also urged the 79-year-old Dalai Lama to "forsake his evil ways" and his “separatist stance,” Xinhua reported.
He claimed fewer world leaders had met the Dalai Lama in recent years due to Tibetan development and stability and a rise in living standards, which were making the Nobel Peace Prize laureate increasingly unpopular on the world stage.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, has voiced severe opposition to leaders meeting the spiritual leader.
Zhu’s comments follow an attack by Padma Choling, governor of the Tibetan region, in which he accused the Dalai Lama of “blasphemy” over his comments on his successor.
Tibet’s prime minister-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, reacted by comparing the selection of the next Dalai Lama by the Communist Party to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro choosing the Pope.
“It’s none of Padma Choling or any of the Communist Party’s business, mainly because Communism believes in atheism and religion being poisonous,” he said, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
He spoke as Tibetans marked the 56th anniversary of the 1959 uprising on Wednesday. In the latest of a series of deadly immolations to protest against Beijing’s rule, a Tibetan woman died last week after setting herself on fire in Tibet’s Ngawa region, the International Campaign for Tibet said.
