Dharamshala: As US President Donald Trump gears up for his five-nation Asia trip, including China, a concurrent resolution on Tibet was introduced in the United States House of Representative yesterday.
The House Concurrent Resolution (H. Con. Res. 89) was introduced in the US Congress by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman Emeritus of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, alongside Reps. Ted Yoho (R-FL) and Brad Sherman (D-CA), the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.
Supporting His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tibet, the resolution calls on the trump administration to make Tibet an important aspect in the US-China relations and to fully implement the US Tibetan Policy Act. It also asks the administration to encourage China to enter into dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama or his representatives and to promote access of US citizens including Tibetan-Americans to Tibet.
Recalling the Congressional Gold medal awarded to His Holiness 10 years ago, the resolution expresses concern over the increasing repression in Tibet, “…in the ten years since the Dalai Lama accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, China has implemented increasingly repressive policies in Tibet, including— (1) travel restrictions against Tibetans and United States citizens; (2) restrictive regulations on religious affairs; (3) censorship of Buddhist literature and information; (4) demolition of Tibetan Buddhist sites; (5) imprisonment of Tibetan prisoners of conscience; and (6) declarations that ‘‘Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and over the end of survival of his lineage resides with the central government of China,” the resolution said.
A similar call was made upon the Trump administration by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in relation to Religious Freedom and urged to demand the release of the 11th Panchen Lama, who at the age of six was abducted with his family by the Chinese government authorities three days after he was chosen as the 11th Panchen Lama by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1995.
Read the full resolution here.