www.TibetanReview.net, July 06’08
Chinese Tibetologists have expressed frustration that they were not being believed in the West where Western colleagues and politicians consider their comments to be propaganda. “In our conversations, our efforts were often being taken as propaganda even when we resorted to our personal experiences to make a point,” the communist party mouthpiece People’s Daily Online Jun 27 quoted Ciwang Junmei, former president of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, as saying. Ciwang has said he got this impression from German press reports of his group’s activities in Germany.
Likewise, Ma Lin, a Tibetologist from Qinghai province, has accused media reports in the West of creating a sympathy for the Dalai Lama and his government in exile. He has claimed that Western politicians, citizens and researchers show them a lot of sympathy while admitting they knew little about the Tibet issue.
The report noted that in a meeting with members of the European Parliament on Jun 26 morning, the Tibetologists were asked why the Dalai Lama was still being branded as a separatist while he had repeatedly said he was seeking autonomy of Tibet, not independence.
The report cited Zha Luo, a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as calling the Dalai Lama’s autonomy proposals threats to China’s sovereignty.