dalai lama, tibet independence, dalai lama on twitter The Dalai Lama has acknowledged that demands for outright independence for Tibet from China are growing stronger. The longer the situation remains unaddressed, he says, the likelier it is this trend will only continue, especially among young Tibetans. Sify News reports:

Answering questions from his Chinese followers on Twitter, which he joined last month, the Dalai Lama said: “There are forces within our community such as the Tibetan Youth Congress who criticize our Middle Way policy and demand complete independence [for Tibet]. It seems their voices are growing stronger [these days].”

The Dalai Lama’s nonviolent “middle way” approach calls for a measure of autonomy under a Chinese sovereign umbrella. Although his approach differs, the Dalai Lama is nonetheless sympathetic to impatience on the part of many inside Tibet and among the diaspora:

We cannot blame them for this since our successive efforts to bring about a mutually beneficial solution [to the issue of Tibet] have failed to produce any positive results and, under such a situation, their viewpoint is gaining momentum [in our society].

The Dalai Lama was responding to questions posed to him by Chinese via Twitter. His recent foray into the medium has gained him an audience of well over 600,000 followers, many of them Chinese. It’ll be interesting to see how well the Chinese government manages to run interference with the his tweets, but so far, they’ve had less success than they’ve had with Yahoo, Google, and, more lately, Apple. From Sify:

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner was submitted 317 questions recently by 1,558 Chinese people through renowned Chinese writer Wang Lixiong. A total of 11,705 Chinese netizens voted for 10 most important questions out of which this was listed as the most important question.

We’ve seen it in Iran and it seems Tibet is already next.

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