THE NEWSPAPER: Lobsang Sangay: «Spain acted with double standards with Tibet»

Lobsang Sangay (Darjeeling, 1968), Prime Minister of the Government of Tibet in exile and political successor of the Dalai Lama since 2011, was born in a refugee settlement in India. He obtained a Fulbright scholarship and received a PhD in Law from Harvard (USA). He was the first Tibetan to achieve it. In June it launched a campaign with the aim of promoting the reopening of dialogue with China. A few days ago he was in Barcelona.

-Your Government does not pursue the independence of Tibet, but an autonomy «genuine».Our proposal is located halfway between repression and separation. If the repression against Tibetans ends, we will not seek secession from China. The middle way is genuine autonomy for Tibetans within China that meets both Tibet's aspirations and China's conditions., that denies separation from the motherland.

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-¿They ask for Western-style autonomy?-Yeah, of course. Our genuine autonomy memorandum details the 11 competencies that we consider basic needs of Tibetans. If we implement them, we will have genuine autonomy. The Chinese Government says that a Tibetan Autonomous Region already exists, autonomous prefectures and autonomous counties. They call everything autonomous, but it's not like that.

-¿Why has there been no political dialogue with China since 2010?-between the 2002 and the 2010 There were nine rounds of contacts between emissaries of the Dalai Lama and Chinese representatives, but the Chinese Government maintained its hard line and did not confront the issue. A leadership change was coming, and coincided with strong protests in Tibet in the 2007 and the 2008. Everything influenced the dialogue to end in January of 2010. The Chinese Government, simply, He did not know how to approach the Tibetan question and how to transform repressive policies into more flexible ones.. From the outside, we remain willing to dialogue, whenever and wherever.

-In recent years there have been more than 130 self-immolations of Tibetans. ¿What effect has this dramatic protest had??-It has generated a certain nervousness among Chinese leaders, and in public statements and private contacts they accused me of being behind these acts. The international community and human rights organizations, however, They understood like us that it is a protest against the occupation of Tibet and the repression of Tibetans.

-¿What did you think of the reform of the universal justice law promoted by the Spanish Government to close the genocide cases against former president Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders??-The way it was done, Spain having a law like this, It seemed like a political act of double standards to me., and quite disappointing. It was an act more political than humanitarian, and almost an interference of the political system in judicial independence.

-A year ago, Hu's indictment in Spain brought hope to the Tibetan community.-He sent a message that there are people and countries that believe in justice, at least symbolically. Actually, I don't think anyone thought that a former Chinese head of state could be tried outside his country.. That's practically impossible, among other things because they do not usually travel abroad when they retire. What the Tibetans expected was for justice to recognize their suffering and their rights., and this symbolic message was sent and gave hope inside and outside Tibet.