"...the Chinese are awaiting my death ..."

I am getting old, and the Chinese are especially preoccupied with that!
They are awaiting my death...

During his recent Europe tour, the Dalai Lama gave talks on "Compassion in Turbulent Times" to large gatherings. Speaking to the press, however, he bluntly decried conditions in Tibet as a "hell on earth," and spoke of official Chinese "cruelty." He repeated a statement he made in Rome in February that now is the "darkest period in Tibetan history."

Yet, with reporters asking about Tibet and China, he offered that: "'I am getting old, and the Chinese are especially preoccupied with that! They are awaiting my death.... I have little hope of reaching a negotiated solution with the Chinese government. My trust in that government is very thin, because the whole communist political system is based on lies and hypocrisy. The local authorities lie to the regional leaders, who lie to Beijing, who then broadcasts those lies to the rest of the world!"

Pico Iyer, author of "The Open Road: The Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama," noted in a recent New York Review of Books article that "in the 34 years I've been regularly talking and listening to him, I've grown used to seeing the [Dalai Lama] begin each day by praying for his 'Chinese brothers and sisters,' and constantly asking his fellow Tibetans to 'reach out to the Chinese people and make better relations,'" but that "for the first time … he could no longer contain his impatience and disappointment with Beijing."


Read the entire article at Phayul.com