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China has been using the proverbial carrot and stick approach to stop Sri Lanka from rolling out the red carpet to welcome the Dalai Lama to the island nation, according to a report in Colombo's Sunday Times.
According to The Sunday Times, to stop Dalai Lama's visit, China's Charge d'affaires in Sri Lanka, Hu Wei this week, warned that if he was welcomed then the nation will have to suffer dire consequences. The warning came during an audience granted to the Chinese mission by the Malwatta Maha Nayaka at his residential temple. The invite to the Tibetan Dalai Lama was extended by a senior scholar-monk of Sri Lanka's Amarapura Nikaya (a Sri Lankan monastic fraternity), along with a group of senior monks, when he had met the Dalai Lama at Bodhi Gaya on December 27. 'I invited, hoping that His Holiness' visit will bring blessings to Lanka,' the monk said, as quoted by The Sunday Times. The news of Dalai Lama's visit alone has invited an evil Chinese curse to fall on Lanka's head; and if she doesn't fall in line with China's wishes, she will be damned. It is understandable that paranoid China should tremble when even a distant prospect of the living incarnate of Tibet's religious oppression visiting a foreign country, looms in view. It resurrects China's invasion and occupation of the once free mountainous Buddhist Kingdom on the 'roof of the world'. According to The Sunday Times, it is true that Tibet had a turbulent past and had come under Chinese and Mongolian domination. But from 1913 until Communist Chinese invaded in 1950, Tibet remained an independent state. The Tibet Press recently reported that China denies Tibet's ancient individual existence, claiming it to be a part of the mainland. The Tibet Press report says that the legitimacy of China's claims is based on an illegal agreement in 1951. The Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, also known as the 17 Point Agreement, was signed on May 23, 1951, by a person devoid of legitimate authority to represent Tibet. According to the Tibet Press, China had pledged to keep Tibet's traditional and religious integrity and local ethnic groups' local practices unhindered. The questioned agreement was signed through coercive means and is devoid of any legal legitimacy, the Tibet Press report reads. Non-compliance with the agreement, however, caused the Tibetan uprising of 1959 which was crushed and also forced the 14th Dalai Lama to flee to India with his followers. (ANI)
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