President of the Tibetans?
For five years.
Who voted for you?
Tibetans in exile.
How many? Where are they?
Today we are 130,000 Tibetans. In India, about 70,000. The rest, around the world.
What else do you vote for?
A Parliament of 45 deputies. And there is also a Tibetan Supreme Court.
Division of powers, I see.
It is the only case in the world of a government in exile that is democratic.
What does the Dalai Lama say?
Since 2011 he renounced his political responsibilities in favor of democracy. He today he is just our spiritual leader.
What do Tibetans ask of you?
Being able to one day set foot in the country of his parents and grandparents, his country!, after 73 years of Chinese invasion and 64 years of exile.
Did you go into exile?
My parents went into exile in southern India: I was born there.
How did your parents leave Tibet?
They walked for weeks in the Himalayas to preserve their language, religion and freedom.
What did they teach you?
That I am Tibetan. And I committed myself to Tibet and its freedom. Since I was a child I know everything about my country without ever having set foot in it!
Never, you say?
I have approached the border from India.
What would happen if you entered Tibet today?
They would arrest me and imprison me. I am a threat to China, because today Tibet is a region of China.
And what would you want Tibet to be?
I aspire to a sovereign country. And China aspires to erase Tibet's identity. Two extremes: the wise thing is the middle way.
What middle way?
Well, being in China... but with autonomy! Like Catalonia, Euskadi, Scotland, Quebec...
And would Tibetans be happy like that?
Yeah! But China refuses to negotiate, although my government makes unofficial representations.
What would Tibet gain with autonomy?
It would preserve its language and religion, its tradition and customs, its identity, as Catalans can do in Spain.
Are you optimistic about it?
The Chinese leaders have a closed mind: do you have a clinic here to operate on them and have them open it?
What has been the worst of Chinese rule?
China destroyed more than 6,000 ancient Tibetan monasteries, murdered...
And today?
They separate children from their families, educate them to be Chinese. In 25 years no one will speak Tibetan and our culture in Tibet will have disappeared.
Does anyone help the Tibetans?
No one dares to snub China. Of course, in Tibet every year many Tibetans sacrifice themselves in style.
I didn't know.
Of course, because the Chinese Government controls all the information. But that's how it is, believe me.
Tibetans could kill instead of each other.
No! The Dalai Lama condemns killing. Buddhism is non-violence.
And what else is Buddhism?
A methodical practice of mental self-control and loving, compassionate broadening of the heart.
And when the Dalai Lama dies, what?
The Dalai Lama, 88, says, to spite China, that he will live to be 113. And then three things could happen...
A.
Let him be the last Dalai Lama. That's what he suggested. To prevent China from wanting to control the next Dalai Lama.
Is this what China intends?
Yes. The Dalai Lama scoffs and tells the Chinese that if they believe in the reincarnated Buddha, look for the reincarnation of Mao...
Of the.
May the Dalai Lama be reincarnated as a child... Or, three, that before dying, by emanation, an adult will succeed him.
Everything is very ambiguous, isn't it?
The Chinese manage the unforeseeable poorly, and this unpredictable range of options from the Dalai Lama... throws them off!
Maybe China will change one day.
In China the number of Buddhists grows year after year, that is true. And it is also true that China is a giant with feet of clay.
Because?
It is undermined by suspicion: the generals are suspicious of their officers, the bureaucrats of the Communist Party are suspicious of the generals... Thus China would lose any war!
Why is China crushing Tibet?
China identifies uniformity with strength... to retain Tibet, Asia's true water reservoir. And a spiritual reservoir that inspires millions of people to achieve personal sovereignty... And this is too dangerous!
