Tibet advocacy group questions integrity of ‘Lhasa Consensus’

DHARAMSHALA, July 13: A Washington-based leading advocacy group for Tibetan issues questioned the integrity of the recently concluded two-day ‘Tibet Development Forum’ in Lhasa and China’s move to involve foreign delegates to garner international support to their ‘Lhasa Consensus’ propaganda.

International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) criticized the forum held last week, attended by the more than 130 non-critical representatives including researchers, officials and correspondents from over 30 countries.

China had barred German politician Markus Rudolph and Michael Brand, a German lawmaker and Chairman of Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee, from the forum due to their remarks on rights violation in Tibet.

According to the ICT, the consensus this year has been worded more cautiously than the previous consensus of 2014, when foreign signatories came under fire for endorsing a statement that was hostile to the ‘Dalai Clique’.

“In comparison, the consensus produced last week used a smokescreen of opaque terminology to attract the backing of foreign delegates and to convince them that China’s policies, which are having a devastating impact on Tibet’s fragile environment, are aimed at conservation of the plateau,” ICT said in a statement.

With a theme, ‘New Phase of Tibet’s Development: Innovative, Coordinated, Green, Open and Shared Development’, China claims to work towards a better and more sustainable development and environmental protection in the Tibetan Plateau.

However, ICT alleged that China have misleadingly described dam-building on a massive scale as water conservation projects and the displacement of nomads from grasslands as environmental protection.

“It is astonishing that foreign individuals representing respectable institutions would endorse Beijing’s propaganda, while hundreds of Tibetan political prisoners are still in jail for expressing their views and while Tibet continues to be practically sealed off to all independent observers and institutions,” said Matteo Mecacci, President of the International Campaign for Tibet.

He also stated that foreign delegates participating in such forum needs to be scrutinized, since it fosters the regimes’ propaganda.

Matteo said that participating in ‘Potemkin tours’ and failing to raise questions publicly about the information regularly produced by independent observers does not contribute to the credibility of such participants or their institutions.

Experts say that Tibet, ‘the Roof of the World’ and also known as the ‘Third Pole’ in recent times have become the epicenter of climate change since it is warming nearly three times as fast as the rest of the world. The plateau is also the source of all the major rivers in Asia