The Indian government refused to allow foreign journalists to cover the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh state in northeast India on November 8, according to the Associated Press.
Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state bordered with China and has been the subject of border disputes between the two countries.
The AP article on the New York Times website reads:
Permits allowing foreign correspondents to travel to Arunachal Pradesh state were not given, and the government revoked passes previously provided to four of them, including two Associated Press journalists.
Foreigners require special government permission to visit the mountainous state.
”We are incredibly surprised and disappointed to learn that reporters’ visas to Arunachal Pradesh have been canceled ahead of the Dalai Lama’s visit,” said Heather Timmons, president of the New Delhi-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
China has strongly opposed the Tibetan spiritual leader’s visit to a Buddhist monastery in the Arunachal Pradesh town of Tawang beginning Sunday.
Although relations between India and China have improved in recent years, tensions can flare because of sharpening economic rivalries, lingering bitterness over their shared border, and unrest in Tibet — the Chinese-controlled Himalayan region on the Indian frontier.
Last week, the Dalai Lama said China was overpoliticizing his travels, adding his decisions on where to go were spiritual in nature, not political.
However, amid pressure from China, more than 800 Buddhist monks in Arunachal are all set to give the Dalai Lama a “religious welcome.”
An article on Spero news reported yesterday:
According to Rinpoche [prime minister of Tibet’s government-in-exile], “this is the fifth visit of the Dalai Lama to the State, actually the sixth, if you count the time when he went through the State on his way to Dharamsala. It is a routine visit, planned long time ago. The Dalai Lama will inaugurate a hospital, and the local population wants to receive his dharshan (blessing). It is clearly a religious trip, nothing political about it.”
It all strictly comes down to the political relationship with China.
Barack Obama also cancelled his meeting with the spiritual Tibetan leader last month, stirring a debate of whether a policy of appeasement towards the Chinese government is undergoing.
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