By David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – The leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile expressed disappointment that human rights appeared absent from US President Donald Trump’s dealings with China, telling Reuters that a focus solely on trade and business risked emboldening Beijing.
Penpa Tsering said in an interview on Wednesday night that US support for Tibet remained broadly stable under the Trump administration, but Tibet was not on the agenda at the presidential level as Washington focuses on trade, security and other priorities with China.
“(Trump) has never mentioned Tibet, he has never mentioned human rights,” he said during a visit to Washington.
China seized control of Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a “peaceful liberation” from feudalistic serfdom.
International human rights groups and exiles have routinely condemned what they call China’s oppressive rule in Tibetan areas, assessments Beijing rejects.
Tsering said the US remained the Tibetan exile movement’s most important international partner and Tibet enjoyed strong bipartisan backing in Congress.
He said his Central Tibetan Administration continued to engage with the State Department, and noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a longtime champion of Tibet-related legislation when he was a senator.
While State Department foreign assistance cuts halved money for Tibet last year, Tsering expressed optimism that full funding would be restored later this year and noted that the current Trump administration appointed a special coordinator for Tibetan issues in its second year, compared with the fourth year of Trump’s first term.
TIBET UNLIKELY TO FEATURE IN TRUMP-XI TALKS
Tsering said he did not expect Tibet to feature in Trump’s planned meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at next week’s APEC summit or at the G20 summit in Florida next month and suggested this may be preferable to becoming a bargaining chip in broader US-China negotiations.
“Maybe sometimes it’s better that way,” he said. “Instead of becoming a bargaining chip. And China is very good in creating leverages.”
However, he said Western governments had become overly focused on trade and economic ties with China while neglecting rights concerns, strengthening China’s power in the process.
“Knowing that the dragon is biting at you, if you still keep feeding them, then whose fault is it?” he said.
“We should be talking more on balancing trade … with human rights and other things, which is not happening so much these days, unfortunately, even people who accuse America of backsliding on democracy still suck up to China.”
He highlighted China’s “ethnic unity and progress” policies, saying they were aimed at weakening Tibetan identity, language, religion and culture. He said Chinese authorities were becoming more open about assimilation policies and faced little international pushback.
China does not recognize the exiled government and has defended its rule in Tibet as bringing much-needed development to what was a backward and feudal society.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Don Durfee and Sanjeev Miglani)
