The Dalai Lama said the US and other countries could help his campaign for a free Tibet by promoting an open society in China.
“Censorship ... is the source of the problem,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said in an interview on Saturday in Beverly Hills.
“The Chinese people have no opportunity to know our issue,” said the Buddhist monk, who Beijing has branded as a dangerous separatist for demanding Tibetan self-determination.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“Once China becomes an open society — freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of information — all this unnecessary fear and doubt will reduce,” he said. “That’s the real answer for this problem.
“American can help in this change,” he said, adding that the lack of free information has helped the Chinese government portray him as a demon and a terrorist.
“Do I look like a demon?” the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize joked, holding his fingers beside his head to make devil horns.
The Dalai Lama, who was to speak on behalf of Whole Child International, an organization that works for orphans around the world, said Western search engines like Google were important to the free flow of information within China. He noted they had ceded to pressure from the Communist government there to limit what users can see.
Google last month threatened to pull out of China if the government did not agree to stop censoring its Chinese-language service.
The Dalai Lama’s visit to the Los Angeles area came on the heels of his low-key meeting on Thursday with US President Barack Obama, which upset Beijing.
Obama used his first presidential meeting with the Dalai Lama to press China to preserve Tibetan identity and to respect human rights in the region, which has been under Chinese rule since 1950.
Tibetans living near the Dalai Lama’s birthplace in northwest China celebrated the meeting with a rare display of fireworks while China, the second-largest creditor to the US, condemned the move.
The Dalai Lama was reluctant to predict what impact the meeting would have.
“We will have to wait ... it’s very difficult to predict,” he said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious