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Tibetan leader calls for dialogue with China Tibetan senior leader, the Karmapa, urges the Chinese government to change its repression policies against religious minorities and start a dialogue
Tibetan Buddhism's No. 3 leader, the Karmapa, asked Chinese leaders Wednesday to start a dialogue to stop Tibetans from setting themselves on fire in protest against Chinese restrictions on their religion and culture. "The Chinese leadership needs seriously to review its policies toward Tibetans and other minorities," the Karmapa, 24, said in a statement. Eleven Tibetan monks, nun or former monk have self-immolated in western China in recent months. "These desperate acts, carried out by people with pure motivation, are a cry against the injustice and repression under which they live," he said. The Karmapa has been living in a monastery in Sidhbari, just outside the northern Indian town of Dharmsala, since he left Tibet in 2000. Dharmsala has been the headquarters of the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile since the Dalai Lama fled the Himalayan region in 1959. On Wednesday, he also appealed to the international community to join Tibetans "in deploring the repression unleashed in the monasteries in Tibet, particularly in the Tibetan region of Sichuan." The Dalai Lama has said that China's "ruthless policy" was behind the self-immolations. China accuses the Dalai Lama and his supporters of stirring up trouble in ethnic Tibetan areas and encouraging followers to set themselves on fire. A boy named in 1995 by the Dalai Lama as the second-highest Tibetan spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama, disappeared shortly afterward and China selected another boy.
