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China angry at Australia's Dalai Lama visit

By Sally Sara | ABC News

An undated file photo of Michael Danby, member of the Australia Labour Party, with the Dalai Lama. Danby led a group of six Federal Parliamentarians representing the Australian All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet. The group met with the Dalai Lama on 2 July 2009. It was the first such visit by an Australian Parliamentary delegation.File photo/Photographer unknown

The Chinese Government has reacted angrily to an Australian parliamentary delegation’s visit to meet Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in India.

It is the first time a group of Australian MPs and senators has travelled to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra says the visit constitutes interference in China’s internal affairs.

The Dalai Lama says Tibet has been given a death sentence by the Chinese Government.

“No freedom of speech, no freedom of press. Their own people put in dark. It is, I think, immoral,” he said.

The Dalai Lama spent more than an hour meeting with members of the first Australian parliamentary delegation to visit him in Dharamshala.

He thanked the all party group of MPs and senators for their support.

“Usually I describe our supporters not like pro-Tibetan, but rather pro-justice,” he said.

Labour MP Michael Danby says several members of the delegation are hoping to travel to Tibet later in the year during an official visit to China.

“If the Parliament asks the Chinese Government to allow this group to go, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be,” he said.

“They would be breaking their word and I’m sure the Chinese Government wouldn’t like to be seen to be doing that.”

The delegation expressed its support for the Dalai Lama’s middle way approach of autonomy rather than independence for Tibet.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra has condemned the Australian visit, saying it constitutes interference in China’s internal affairs.

Fifty years after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, more activists are continuing to arrive in Dharamshala.

The Australian delegation visited a new arrivals centre and met one man who says he was shot by Chinese forces during a protest in March last year.

He told the delegation he thought he was going to die because he was bleeding so heavily.

On Monday, the Dalai Lama will celebrate his 74th birthday and he remains hopeful of returning home.

“Even some of my friends, Tibetan, are now 90 years old. Some, even [though] they [are] also still waiting, one day [will] go back,” he said.

“So then I compare them who [are] already in [their] 90s. So I am a bit younger.”

Copyright © 2009 ABC

Published in ABC News