China’s ruling Communist party for the first time has publicly said some of its officials were funding the Dalai lama by donating money to the 81-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, undermining the fight against “separatist” forces.
A senior discipline inspection official has “lambasted some party officials for allegedly donating money to the 14th Dalai lama, saying such behaviour severely undermines the party’s fight against separatism,” State-run Global Times reported on Tuesday. Some party officials have neglected important political issues and the country’s anti-separatist struggle, Wang Yongjun, head of the discipline watchdog in Tibet, which is officially called the Tibet Autonomous Region, said.
It did not reveal the names or the designations of the officials. This is the first time official media here has come out with a disclosure of Chinese officials’ links with the Dalai lama after he fled from China to India in 1959.