Tibet News (12.2.08)

by Danny Fisher

Here are some of today’s headlines about the situation in Tibet:

  • At his blog Pomfret’s China, author John Pomfret writes about China’s refusal to talk “as Rome burns.”
  • In the letters to the editor in yesterday’s New York Times, the British Foreign Office’s Minister of State responds to Columbia University Tibetologist Robbie Barnett’s recent op-ed “Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?”
  • The Agence France-Presse reports that while in Prague His Holiness the Dalai Lama said:
      I’m always telling my friends that a good, a close relationship with a huge country like China is very essential, and not only for the economy. But in the meantime, there are principles, like freedom of expression, human rights, democracy… for which you have to stand firm. Genuine friendship leaves a space to be firm, and at the end the other does appreciate (that)… That is genuine friendship, but sometimes for totalitarian people it is difficult to understand those things.