Europe’s politicians avoid contact with the Dalai Lama – demonstrate their own weakness in Europe’s human rights politics

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) criticised on Tuesday the avoidance of contact with the Dalai Lama on the part of Europe’s leading politicians. "It is a demonstration of weakness if neither the Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, nor the President of Germany, Horst Köhler, can find time to receive the head of the Tibetans during his visit to Germany, which begins on Friday”, said the GfbV Asia expert, Ulrich Delius. Never before in the past 20 years have so many violations of human rights been practised against the Tibetans. "In the light of this massive persecution Europe’s politicians should display more firmness towards Peking and not allow China’s leaders to dictate to them to whom they should speak.”

But it is not only leading politicians in Germany who hesitate to receive the Dalai Lama. The foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) rejected the plan of gaining information directly from the Dalai Lama at their meeting on the situation in Tibet and the progress of the talks with the Chinese leaders. The EU President in office from Slovenia issued a clear rejection of proposals in this vein in order not to anger the Chinese leaders. So the Slovenian Foreign Minister, Dimitri Rupel, said to the special envoy of the Chinese government on 19th April 2008 that the EU did not intend to invite the Dalai Lama to a meeting of the ministers.

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, likewise announced at the weekend that in the light of the Olympic Games 2012 in London he would only receive the religious and temporal leader on 23rd May in London as a religious dignitary and not at his official residence.

Brown had in recent weeks emphasised that he strongly disapproved of the non-attendance of any European politicians at the opening ceremony of the Olympiad in Peking on 8th August 2008.