Features

Why China is blocking Dalai Lama’s Sri Lanka visit

Published

2 years ago

2024/04/21

The Lankans have been trying to have the Dalai Lama visit since January 2023

Leading monk Ven Waskaduwe Mahindawansa went on television to state that the Chinese had pressured the Lankan government to prevent the visit

By Gautam Mukherjee

(Firstpost) The—70 per cent plus Buddhist—Sinhala population of Sri Lanka fervently wants to welcome the 87-year-old Dalai Lama into their country at the earliest. A group of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who met the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya in 2022 invited him to come.

Dalai Lama is revered by his direct followers and other Buddhist sects as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha, Avalokiteshvara. The current monk was anointed at the age of 15 in 1950, the very year the Chinese took over Tibet.

The Sri Lankans have been trying to have the Dalai Lama visit since January 2023. They are trying once more now as fresh efforts intensify on the open invitation from the various Buddhist monasteries. Many Sri Lankan Buddhists feel the Dalai Lama can help sort out the island nation’s economic woes with his wisdom and blessings.

Leading Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Waskaduwe Mahindawansa went on television to state that the Chinese had pressured the Sri Lankan government to prevent the visit.

The Chinese, ever political and strategic, want the Sri Lankan Buddhists to team up with Gandharan Buddhists in Pakistan rather than the Indian-orders that are opposed to the Chinese. And certainly, they do not want the Dalai Lama to visit and be honoured.

The impediment to a Sri Lankan visit comes every time by way of China. Beijing’s debt restructuring will play a crucial role in obtaining further soft loans from the IMF. This has tied the hands of the Sri Lankan government.

The Chinese still regard the elderly Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist with massive influence, a living and highly popular symbol of resistance to the Chinese takeover of Tibet.

One of the thorny problems stretching beyond the present incumbent is that the Buddhist monasteries in Tawang, Leh, and elsewhere in India do not agree that the Dalai Lama’s successor can be chosen by the Chinese. The Buddhists everywhere are furious at the constant insults hurled by the Communist Chinese against the Dalai Lama, who do not recognise him as a spiritual leader at all, calling him a ‘wolf’ in monks robes.

The internal facts in Tibet are quite damning. Since 1949, over 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed, over 6,000 monasteries destroyed, and thousands of Tibetans imprisoned. The Tibetans are being relocated to dense city enclaves in Lhasa; their smart phones are monitored; and the Mandarin language is being pushed in place of the Tibetan.

With all this and 74 years of effort, including much infrastructure development and the relocation of ethnic Han Chinese to Lhasa, the Chinese are still not the masters of Tibetan hearts and minds. Similar problems of non-acceptance of unbridled repression plague the Communist CCP in Xinkiang, Hong Kong, against dissidence of any kind in the country, and of course, Taiwan.

The Chinese authorities bristle at everything the Dalai Lama says and does, and are disturbed every time the Dalai Lama travels within India or internationally. Still, the Dalai Lama has been very successful at promoting the Tibetan cause. The Chinese don’t like the fact that the Dalai Lama is completely free in India. They objected strongly to the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Tawang Buddhist monastery and other parts of Arunachal Pradesh as a state guest in 2016. China, typically and audaciously, claims 90,000 sq km of the state, even today as ‘South Tibet’.

China is firmly opposed to the Nobel Laureate and international apostle of spiritual optimism. The fact that the young Lama escaped to India, which gave him sanctuary, is a constant thorn in the flesh of the Chinese side. Even today, Tibetans in occupied Tibet are rarely given Chinese passports to travel. They are specifically discouraged from visiting the Dalai Lama in India, more so since 2012. There is also a ban on openly worshipping him.

China handed out brownie points to relatively smaller countries like South Africa, a part of BRICS, when it was far more important and influential, for blocking a Dalai Lama visit in 2011.

This was widely criticised internally. The Lama was to go to Cape Town on the occasion of the 80th birthday of fellow Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu, at his invitation.

The Dalai Lama did visit South Africa to meet with Nelson Mandela in 1996. But he was prevented from doing so again before the 2010 World Cup. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in 2011, Hong Lei, laid out the unrelenting policy on the venerable monk when he said, ‘China’s position of opposing the Dalai Lama visiting any country with ties to China is clear and consistent’.

When the Dalai Lama met Mexican President Felipe Calderon in 2011, China said it had ‘harmed Chinese-Mexican relations’. Likewise, Beijing was critical of President Barack Obama receiving the Dalai Lama in the White House in July 2011. However, Presidents Clinton and George W Bush also met the Dalai Lama, ignoring Chinese protests. As did Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicholas Sarkozy of France, and Gordon Brown of Britain.

Much was done to impact the careers of Hollywood stars like Richard Gere by backing Tibetan aspirations and regularly visiting McLeod Ganj.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 on muleback and on foot, just ahead of the Chinese takeover of his Potala Palace in Lhasa. This followed a failed Tibetan uprising against the Han Chinese occupation of Tibet. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in an admirable act of idealistic courage, allowed the young Dalai Lama and his small band of fellow monks and followers refuge at Dharamshala/McLeod Ganj, in what is now Himachal Pradesh. India signed a document recognising China’s takeover of Tibet in 1954.

Yet, in hindsight, Nehru may have had to pay for harbouring the Dalai Lama, by way of the unprovoked Chinese invasion of NEFA in 1962. Of course, it wasn’t the only reason. However, it was a shock and humiliation that Nehru wasn’t able to survive for long.

Soon, a nucleus of exiled Tibetans and enough monks to form a spiritual organisation grew around the Dalai Lama. More and more Indian and international devotees and admirers made the trip to McLeod Ganj as the time wore on. For the Tibetans trapped on the other side, in Chinese-occupied Tibet, the Dalai Lama has remained a symbol of hope for ‘genuine autonomy’ instead of subjugation, over the years, since 1950.

A Tibetan government in exile formed in McLeod Ganj holds elections and thrives to this day, frequently appearing to give its views on Indian television. Its stated purpose is to one day see their way to a free Tibet, or at least a truly ‘autonomous’ region.

Many of the Tibetans and their descendants have integrated into Indian society, marrying other communities, forming clusters and colonies in different parts of the hills and plains of India.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Force is a formidable military presence all along the LAC with China and is being steadily expanded. By way of contrast, the Han Chinese have had great difficulty motivating the natives of sparsely populated Tibet to work with them in any capacity or help their efforts to man and defend the LAC with India.

Instead, the Chinese have been forced to use Han conscripts from the plains, ill-suited to the rare air and high altitude. Most, including the senior officers, fall sick, and have to be frequently replaced.

China puts out a different development narrative with impressive statistics. Tibet now has a prosperous economy with a GDP of $31 billion and a per capita income of $8,000. This is twice that of Sri Lanka and four times that of India, they state. Life expectancy is now 72.19 years. There are 46,000 monks and nuns in over 1,700 monasteries in Tibet.

Critics say these statistics are fudged and a debt-driven narrative. Most of all, there is no freedom of religion. The effort to nurture a phoney Buddhist ethos is to legitimise Chinese efforts to name a state-sponsored Dalai Lama successor.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator.

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Features

The hard challenge of clinching a political settlement in the Middle East

Published

21 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bruised hearts: Displaced Palestinian civilians in the Gaza.(Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Despite some sections of the Trump administration persisting with the view that the possibility could not be entirely ruled out of there being a diplomatic solution to the current US-Iran hostilities in West Asia, the skeptic could not be blamed for thinking otherwise. The intensity, scale and frequency of the tit-for-tat strikes by the antagonists over the past few days against selected military targets and civilian infrastructure in particular in West Asia make the adoption of this stance excusable.

The continuing hostilities render the mentioning of the MOU signed between the warring parties in mid-June a laughable matter. While it could very well be that the foes are wishing privately for a cessation of hostilities before long, what seems to be uppermost on their minds right now is to negotiate with each other from a position of strength. This strategy compels them to incapacitate each other militarily to the extent possible, lest they have to concede too much to each other during negotiations. Hence the stepped-up hostilities.

However, even on the question of there being a negotiated political settlement in the West Asian theatre in the longer term, the skeptic could come to be seen as scoring over the optimist. Developments on the ground account for this.

At the time of writing Israel’s Netanyahu government is going ahead in fairly care-free fashion with the establishment of more Jewish settlements in the Gaza and the West Bank, and it’s all happening under the apparently complacent gaze of the US. In fact, some quarters estimate that Israel is in control of some 65% of the Gaza Strip. Ethnic cleansing, that is, is being drastically stepped-up.

Accordingly, in terms of the power relations of West Asia, the world is almost back to the status quo of the late forties of the last century when the state of Israel was established and the Palestinians were reduced to a microscopic minority in the land they came to inhabit. Therefore, even the impartial observer would be compelled to ask: ‘Will a negotiated peace be ever possible in the Middle East?’

The humanist in the observer would prefer to answer this question in the affirmative and it is indeed the ideal stance to adopt considering the staggering human and material costs of the conflict. But the way ahead to peace could be expected to be highly hazardous and arduous. Among other odds, it would also prove an uphill endeavour to win minds and hearts.

The US’ Trump administration would need to be counted out in this pursuit. This is on account of the fact that it has been far too wayward in its management of West Asian affairs in particular over the past couple of years. Given its unpredictable character it is a matter for conjecture whether it could be counted on to live up to its commitments.

Moreover, Israel could be expected to ‘go it alone’ in the Middle East regardless of whether US help is coming or otherwise. It has indicated as much in recent times and Israel could be doubted on this score only at the doubter’s peril. Because time and again Israel has demonstrated that it could steadfastly defend its interests even single-handedly in the Middle East. History bears this out.

However, a durable alliance with the US would stand Israel in good stead. On the matter of military and intelligence assistance, for example, the US’s help proved invaluable for Israel in the past and going forward this is bound to be so as well. Moreover, it is unlikely that the Trump administration would give up on Israel, considering that a strong Israel is crucial for the furtherance of the US’ strategic and economic interests in West Asia.

But whether the above factors would have a considerable bearing on the question of working out a durable solution to the West Asian tangle is an entirely different matter. Israel, as in the case of the Palestinian enclaves, is acutely security conscious and would need to satisfy itself fully that it could live in a security environment that would guarantee its complete safety, going forward.

The Middle East is badly in need of another peace effort on the lines of the Oslo Accords of the mid-nineties that brought the key actors together and helped hammer out a solution that addressed some of their notable concerns. To be sure, that process did not prove to be the ideal answer to the tangle, but it yielded some respite to the region and drove home that one-time sworn foes could indeed negotiate with a degree of success. The West Bank authority, although falling short of fulfilling some key Palestinian aspirations, is testimony that a degree of success is possible if the intent is right.

Given the current realities of West Asia, peace-making is bound to be an uphill challenge. The violence faced in recent times by the Palestinian community, in particular, has been nothing less than mind-numbing. Merciless has been the violence visited on them by the Israeli side. In such circumstances, durable peace in the region could smack of an idealist’s dream.

Nevertheless, there needs to be urgently, a meeting of minds over the divides. The US would need to be counted out as an honest broker in bringing the sides together but the rest of the West would do well to step up to the challenge.

In this exercise the onus would be on the world’s democracies to take the initiative and doggedly stay the course. An acceptable combination would be the EU and the UN. Given their credentials, the main sides in West Asia ought to find them the least controversial.

Even if the relevant institutional and political arrangements could be shored up to take a reconciliation process forward, winning hearts and minds for the peace drive would prove a grueling challenge. Over the past few years in particular tens of thousands of hearts and minds on both sides of the divide have been bruised badly in the runaway murderous violence that has come to define the Middle East.

These badly scarred personalities would need to experience healing without much delay. It is therefore a multi-faceted challenge that is at hand. Since wide-ranging expertise would be needed in the healing process, people’s participation in peace-making, ranging over the divides, would need to be made a durable reality. It will be a time for enthroning humanity and ensuring the rejection of all forms of violence and coercion.

Features

Amazing Thailand …right here in Colombo

Published

21 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

For many Sri Lankans, Thailand is the go-to holiday — beaches, temples, food, and that famous warm hospitality.

In fact, I’ve been to Amazing Thailand 24 times myself, and was honoured with the Friends of Thailand International Media Award by the Tourism Authority of Thailand for promoting Thai tourism.

The good news I have for you today is that you don’t even need a passport to get a taste of Amazing Thailand.

The Royal Thai Embassy, in Colombo, is bringing a vibrant slice of Thailand, to the city of Colombo, with Thai Festival 2026 — a cultural experience like never before.

Whether you are an avid enthusiast of Thai culture, a total novice, or simply just interested in exploring foreign cultures, Thai Festival 2026 is going to be the perfect opportunity for you to get more than just a glimpse into one of the most celebrated cultural heritages in South East Asia. And ENTRANCE IS FREE.

The festival will be held on the 1st and 2nd of August, 2026, at Siam Nivasa, 43, C.W.W. Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, and the East Parking Area, of the Colombo Municipal Council, from 11:00am to 5:00pm.

Both days will be full of live entertainment, and dispersed throughout with Thai cultural displays, including exhilarating traditional dance performances and breathtaking Muay Thai demonstrations.

Exploring art and craft specific to Thailand, tasting irresistible authentic Thai cuisine, and playing arcade games, are just a few more fun-filled events available for visitors at the festival premises.

An array of Thai products will also be available for purchase.

While at the festival, you will find Sri Lankan Alumni from Thai universities sharing their experiences with you and willing to answer any questions you might have, related to studying abroad in Thailand.

You can also register for the Muay Thai workshop that will be happening on the 7th and 8th of August, 2026, in Colombo.

Irresistible authentic Thai cuisine

Visitors can also stand a chance to win traditional Thai souvenirs, get exclusive photo opportunities, and, the big one — to enter the raffle draw, at the end of each day, for the grand prize of an all-inclusive round trip to Thailand.

Be sure to avail yourself of this exceptional opportunity and add a cultural spin to your weekend.

To keep up with the latest updates on Thai Festival 2026, head over to the Thai Festival official social media pages.

The Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo official webpage:

https://colombo.thaiembassy.org

Official social media:

Facebook: @RTEColombo

Instagram: @thaiembassysrilanka

Thai Festival official social media:

Facebook: Thai Festival in Colombo

Instagram: @thaifestival_colombo

TikTok: @thaifestival.incolombo

Features

Thicker, stronger hair …

Published

21 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Hair fall, in this heat, can be so frustrating, and noticing a thin patch is even more worrying. The good news is … yes, with a little care and kitchen ingredients, you can nourish your scalp and support healthy regrowth.

Try these four easy home remedies … even our grandmothers trusted:

* Coconut Oil and Curry Leaves Tonic:

Warm 04 tablespoons of coconut oil, with a handful of curry leaves, till the leaves turn black. Cool, strain, and massage into scalp 02-03 times a week. Leave for 01 hour, or overnight.

Why:

Coconut oil deeply nourishes, while curry leaves help strengthen roots and add shine.

* Onion Juice for Spot Treatment:

With cotton, dab the juice of 01 small onion, directly on the thin/bald patches. Leave for 20-30 minutes, and then wash with a mild shampoo. Use twice a week.

Why:

Rich in sulfur, onion juice helps boost blood circulation to the scalp.

* Aloe Vera and Castor Oil Mask:

Mix 02 tablespoons of fresh aloe vera gel and 01 tablespoon castor oil and apply to the scalp, focusing on thinning areas. Leave for 45 minutes, and then rinse with cool water.

Why:

Aloe vera soothes the scalp, while castor oil coats hair to make it look thicker.

* Fenugreek and Curd Strengthening Pack:

You will need 02 tablespoons fenugreek seeds, soaked overnight, and 02 tablespoons plain curd.

Grind to a paste, apply to scalp for 30 minutes, and then wash.

Why:

Fenugreek strengthens strands and reduces breakage.

Extra Tips for Healthy Hair:

Avoid tight hairstyles that pull on the scalp.

Eat iron and protein rich foods: greens, dhal, eggs, fish.

Use lukewarm water, not hot.

Be gentle when brushing and drying.