China's Hu hits back over Tibet crackdown
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Chinese President Hu Jintao Saturday defended the crackdown on protests in Tibet and denied the disturbances were linked to human rights in his first public comments on the incident.
Hu told Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd the unrest was aimed purely at "splitting the motherland" and insisted Beijing's handling of unrest was its own affair, according to state media.
The clampdown has provoked a wave of anti-China demonstrations with activists targeting the Beijing Olympics torch relay as it passed through Europe and the United States this week.
"Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Hu as saying at a regional forum here.
"It is a problem (of) either safeguarding national unification or splitting the motherland," he said on the southern island of Hainan. "The Tibet problem is entirely an internal issue of China."
Exiled Tibetan leaders say Beijing's suppression of the rare protests, which began last month, left about 150 dead. Hu, whose officials say only that Tibetan "rioters" left 20 dead, maintained the response was justified.
"No responsible government will sit idle for such crimes, which gravely encroach human rights, gravely disrupt social order and gravely jeopardize the life and property security of the masses," he said.
China's communist rulers vehemently deny they are responsible for religious and cultural repression in Tibet, and insist their control of the region has benefited its devoutly Buddhist people.
The rare unrest has thrown an unwelcome spotlight on China ahead of this years Beijing Games, with Olympics' chief Jacques Rogge admitting the event was in "crisis" as protesters disrupted the torch relay.
Hu was Tibet's Communist Party chief from 1988 to 1992, a key step in his political rise. He said the door was open for talks with the Dalai Lama, the regions exiled spiritual leader.
"The barrier to contacts and talks does not lie on our side, but on the side of the Dalai Lama. If the Dalai Lama has the sincerity, he should put it into action," the president said.
"As long as the Dalai side stops activities splitting the motherland, stops activities scheming and instigating violence, and stops activities sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games, we are ready to continue contacts and talks with him at any time," Hu said.
China has repeatedly blamed the "Dalai clique," or people close to the Dalai Lama, for orchestrating the unrest, which it says is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the August Olympics.
The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing his homeland in 1959, denies the charge and insists that he does not want independence for Tibet. China has ruled Tibet since 1951, after sending in troops to "liberate" the region a year earlier.
The Olympic torch left for the East African nation of Tanzania late Friday after passing through Buenos Aires under tight security in a relay free of the scuffles that marred earlier legs.