Boston Prepares for Arrival of the Dalai Lama, Obama Admin. Prepares to Ignore Him

The Dalai Lama will be coming to Boston April 30th-May 3, 2009 and will be giving a series of lectures as well as being the guest of honor at the new Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. I am going to one of his workshops this upcoming Saturday.

The Tibetan-American community in New England has been preparing for the Dalai Lama’s arrival and have been taking part in a labor of love of sorts:

In the basement and driveway of a humble Malden house, the carpenters are building a throne.

Across town, in Medford, a lab technician spends his nights sewing embroidered silk for the drapery.

Three Tibetan-American men, two of them former monks, have devoted much of the last month to constructing the 9-foot high chair on which a cross-legged Dalai Lama will sit for a pair of lectures at Gillette Stadium next month.

The resulting throne is the most visible manifestation of the efforts by Boston’s small Tibetan community to prepare for the Dalai Lama’s four-day visit to the region, which begins April 29. But the throne also sheds light on the unusual backstories of local Tibetans, many of whom escaped difficult lives in Tibet or lived in exile in India before arriving in the United States.

The needleworker, Kunga Namgyal, leads the ordinary life of a research scientist at Shire, a biopharmaceutical company. But Namgyal is also the son and grandson of famed Tibetan tailors – his father was a tailor for the Dalai Lama – and now, at night, when he can steal time from playing with his son and dining with his wife, he sits on the floor by a china cabinet filled with Buddha statues and tries to remember what his own dad taught him about sewing.

One gem: While conventional sewing often involves pointing a needle away from the artisan, Tibetan Buddhists sew with the needle pointing toward themselves, to symbolize compassion for others who won’t get poked.

Hopefully, when the Dalai Lama returns to the United States in October (according to media reports), the US government will show him the respect and honor he deserves by granting him an official state visit with the President and the Secretary of State, although the Obama administration seems a bit too worried China might get “angry.”

While I hold out hope that the Obama administration will come to it’s collective senses and grant the Dalai Lama an official audience with the President and other high-level US officials, I realize that the outlook doesn’t look good.  I believe 100% that Hillary Clinton is totally invested in full human rights for the people of China and Tibet but I realize that in her capacity as Obama’s Secretary of State, she must speak for the administration and not just for her own personal views.  Thus, my critical review of the administration’s posture towards China and the Dalai Lama is not a personal criticism of Hillary Clinton, but rather a criticism of what appears to be our policy towards China thus far (although it’s still early and much could change).

As an example of the new administration’s somewhat confused message about the importance of human rights in Tibet, on March 10th 2009, Secretary Clinton’s acting press sec’y, Robert Wood, had announced that Secretary Clinton would be issuing a personal statement later in the day as it was the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile. The day came and went and no personal statement from Secretary Clinton was ever issued. However, on that same day, she did meet with the Chinese Foreign Minister and simply cannot be a coincidence that China had an official audience with the Secretary of State on the anniversary of the uprising and unfortunately, it is hard to interpret that as anything other than a huge slap in the face of the long-suffering people of Tibet, not to mention to human rights supporters everywhere.

So, what happened to the plan to have the SOS personally address the 50th anniversary of the Tibet uprising and exile of the Dalai Lama? Well, as the media noted at the Daily Press Briefing the next day, March 11th, Secretary Clinton had apparently reversed course and late in the afternoon [March 10th], she had her press secretary, Robert Wood, issue the statement- unfortunately, it was a statement of such little importance and stature that it does not even appear on the State Dept. website under the section dealing with the past and present remarks/statements of the Secretary of State, making it appear as though the US again caved to pressure from China despite the total inappropriateness of China’s attempts at micro-management (by affecting something as simple as issuing a personal statement). To make matters worse, President Obama broke protocol [by meeting with a lower level diplomat as opposed to the Chinese President] and met with the Chinese Minister (after SOS Clinton did the previous day) in order to assuage the “tensions” that had developed over the Tibet issue. Ouch.

I really don’t think it is in the best interest of the US to give the impression that China dictates US policy towards Tibet, Taiwan and possibly Sudan.

While the Obama administration was trying not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the Chinese government, the House of Representatives at that time (March, 2009) demonstrated their backbone and almost unanimously re-affirmed their commitment to Tibet and human rights.  In my humble opinion, the Obama administration needs to get over its fear that China will get angry and threaten to sever ties with the US given China throws these sort of temper tantrums about once a week with just about every nation on the globe with the possible exception of North Korea and Sudan.

Lets hope that the Obama administration [and Secretary Clinton] begin to realize that their popularity, moral authority and past commitment to ending the repression against the people of Tibet, gives them much more power with respect to China than even they seem to realize.

UPDATE: I just came acrossthis NYT editorial about the flagrant hypocrisy of China with respect to it’s constant need to play the aggrieved victim while simultaneously being the obvious bully on the playground.

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