Washington believes that the decision to pick the successor to Tibet's current top Buddhist leader should be as per religious traditions; the state has no role in it
China has grown wary about who will succeed the 14th Dalai Lama. Pic/AFP
The US has hinted that it will oppose any move by China to impose its own Dalai Lama on the Tibetan people as Washington believes that the decision to pick the successor to Tibet's current top Buddhist leader should be as per religious traditions and the state has no role in it.
China has grown increasingly wary about who will succeed the 14th Dalai Lama, who lives in India on exile. According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, when the current Dalai Lama passes away, he will reincarnate as another person. China has maintained that it has the authority to appoint the successor to the 14th Dalai Lama, who is loyal to Beijing.
Explaining the Trump administration's stand to lawmakers on Tuesday, Laura Stone, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said, "The United States has a very clear position that decisions, religious decisions, should be made within religious organisations, that this isn't the role of the state." Stone was responding to a question from Senator Cory Gardner during a Congressional hearing. Gardner said it was clear that this Congress would not recognise a Chinese imposition on the Tibetan people.
"I wouldn't want to prejudge exactly how this, a future scenario, would roll out but I would like to lay a marker that that is the clear position of the United States government and, I think, widely supported within the American society, that those are the kinds of decisions that should be made by religious communities on their own and without outside interference," she asserted.
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