23 May 2008
Dalai Lama speaks about possible future developments in Tibet
(Guardian) The Dalai Lama claimed that Beijing was planning the mass settlement of 1 million ethnic Chinese people in Tibet after the Olympics with the aim of diluting Tibetan culture and identity. He also claimed that some of Asia's most important rivers which flow from the Tibetan plateau are being polluted and diminished by careless industrialisation and unplanned irrigation. He made the claims in an interview with the Guardian newspaper. The Dalai Lama said he had been informed by Tibetan residents that large areas of empty land had been marked out, as if for construction, in the past two years. "Then last year we received information - after the Olympics 1 million Chinese are going to settle in the autonomous region of Tibet", he said, adding the information came from a "military source" in Tibet. "There is every danger Tibet becomes a truly Han Chinese land and Tibetans become an insignificant minority. Then the very basis of the idea of autonomy becomes meaningless".