China has warned US presidential candidate John McCain to stop ‘supporting and conniving with’ the Dalai Lama, saying that meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader hurt Sino-US relations.
The call came after the presumed Republican candidate met the Dalai Lama on Friday during the Dalai Lama’s visit to the US, praising him as a ‘transcendent international role model and hero’.
‘China is seriously concerned about the report,’ foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said, according to a statement on the ministry's website, adding that Tibet was China's domestic affair.
Mr Liu urged US citizens to recognise that the Dalai Lama was trying to separate China and was aiming to destroy social stability in the western region ‘under the cloak of religion’.
The Dalai Lama has insisted he does not want independence for Tibet, however, and only seeks greater autonomy for the Himalayan territory, as well as an end to religious and cultural repression.
Senator McCain has criticised China's record on human rights in Tibet, which was thrown into the spotlight in March during a crackdown on protests against Chinese rule that began in the region's capital, Lhasa.
The protests spread to other parts of China with Tibetan populations, with the government-in-exile saying 203 Tibetans were killed in the crackdown.
Beijing insists that only one Tibetan was killed, and has in turn accused the ‘rioters’ of killing 21 people.
China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending troops in to ‘liberate’ the remote Himalayan region.
The Dalai Lama fled his homeland in 1959 following a failed uprising and has since lived in exile in India.
