DHARAMSALA, India – Tibetans and not China should decide if the Dalai Lama lives in Lhasa’s Potala Palace, the government-in-exile said, after Beijing cast doubt on whether the spiritual leader would ever be allowed back to the 1,300-year-old mansion.
“It’s a common heritage of the Tibetan people and it is for the Tibetan people to decide where they want their spiritual and political leader to reside,” said Thupten Samphel, spokesman for the government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India.
“The wonder and the magnificence of the Potala Palace today was due to the architectural skills of carpenters and stonemasons of the Tibetan people, who built the Potala Palace. There wasn’t a single penny spent by the Chinese government,” Samphel told AFP Saturday.
The Dalai Lama fled the Potala Palace for India in 1959 as Chinese troops crushed an abortive uprising in Lhasa. Chinese officials said August 26 that if the Dalai Lama is permitted to return it is highly unlikely he would be allowed to live in the ornate palace atop a high hill in the heart of the Tibetan capital.
“Since UNESCO named the Potala Palace as a World Heritage site in 1994, we feel that the Potala Palace now belongs to the people of the world, it no longer belongs to the Dalai Lama,” said Xiang Guohua, an official in charge of the palace’s restoration.
“Besides, I doubt the Dalai Lama would want to live there because it lacks modern conveniences.”
Chinese officials also told foreign journalists escorted on a rare trip to Tibet that the Dalai Lama declined an invitation to attend the funeral of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in January 1989.
But the spokesman for the government-in-exile said there was little time to prepare for what would have been the Dalai Lama’s first trip home in three decades.
“The invitation was from the China Buddhist Association. It was not from the Chinese government. Technically, the invitation stated His Holiness the Dalai Lama reach Tibet on February 15 and the invitation was dated February 7.”
“The schedule of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is fixed a year in advance and in such a short notice, the visit was obviously not possible,” Samphel said.
Jampa Phutsok, chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, had told reporters that the Chinese Buddhist Association, “under the recommendation of the central government, invited the Dalai Lama to come back and attend the funeral service.”
“He didn’t come, he made a wrong calculation, this was a very good opportunity and he gave it up,” Phutsok said.
