Tokyo, March 15 – Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama plans to visit Japan in November in a move likely to spark protests from China, press reports said on Saturday.
The Dalai Lama accepted an invitation to visit Japan when he met with Japanese lawmakers in Dharamsala, India, on Friday, the conservative daily Sankei Shimbun and the Kyodo news agency said.
The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in Dharamsala, has visited Japan seven times in the past at the invitation of religious groups.
Tokyo has issued him visas on condition that he refrain from political activities.
“If the Japanese government allows my entry, I would like to go,” the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying by Seishu Makino, who heads a group of Japanese lawmakers promoting relations with Tibet.
Following a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule by Tibetans, Beijing has urged Japan not to admit the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader into the country.
China, which annexed Tibet in 1950, is opposed to any international appearances by the Dalai Lama, whom it regularly condemns as a troublemaker and “splitist.”
On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Denmark protested against the Dalai Lama’s planned visit to Copenhagen in June, when he is to be officially received by Denmark’s prime minister and foreign minister.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in the northern Himalayan town since 1959, when he and thousands of followers fled their homeland after the failed uprising.
Last November, China reacted angrily to a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a Japanese government vice minister when he stopped here on his way back from Mongolia.
The Chinese foreign ministry raised representations with the Japanese government over the issue, it said, and called on Tokyo to take measures to ensure that similar incidents do not occur again.
