(TibetanReview.net, Jul18’24) – While China has dismissed any idea of holding talks with the exile Tibetan administration, which is known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), based in Dharamshala, India, the latter’s executive head, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, has reiterated Jul 17 that back-channel contacts have been ongoing, with the latest one held as recently as at the beginning of this month.
“We have been having back-channel negotiation with the Chinese side. We do not have any expectation from these talks, but we have to keep the engagements going as these are part of our long-term plans. We met in the first week of this month and the talks are being held with the help of a third country,” thehindu.com Jul 17 quoted the Tibetan Sikyong as saying, speaking to a select group of media in New Delhi.
Asked why talks were being held despite the absence of any expectations, the Tibetan Sikyong has explained, according to the PTI news agency Jul 17, “We just cannot think of the short term. We cannot only think about Xi Jinping. He will be there for sometime and then he will be gone. But we have to keep our communications (with Beijing) going.”
“The back-channel talks are going on. However, China never acknowledges them. It is their policy not to acknowledge,” he has said.
He has not mentioned which that third country is, or the level of the officer(s) involved in the talks. Further, he has said the back-channel talks were started on the initiative of the Chinese side and were being held in that third country, according to the economictimes.com Jul 17.
Speaking in the language of ‘Resolve Tibet Act’, a US legislation that was recently signed by President Joe Biden, the Tibetan Sikyong has said, “Tibet continues to be an unresolved conflict and its resolution has to be based on international law.”
He has complained that countries of Europe and the West often talk about violation of human rights and religious rights in Tibet, but these fail to convey the real problem. He has added that the new US legislation will help in countering China’s official position on Tibet based on its “misinformation campaign” which underplays the territory’s own rich history, and, instead, projects it as part of China since the ancient era.
He has also taken exception to China’s renaming of placenames across Tibet and expressed confidence that this exercise will not erase Tibet’s unique culture and identity.
Speaking ahead of visiting the United States after Biden’s signing of the Resolve Tibet Act, the Tibetan Sikyong has said the CTA will counter the renaming of Tibetan placenames by China by creating a map of Tibet that will carry the names of all the places of Tibet in Tibetan language.