On Monday, the
Dalai Lama visited Ottawa, where he shook hands with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. On Tuesday, the Tibetan leader captivated a room full of Toronto reporters, suggesting his visit was non-political all the while acknowledging the international upheaval his Canadian stops have caused.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to speak to thousands of Buddhist faithful Wednesday, but got right to the heart of matters a day earlier when he called the relationship between Tibet and China "very sensitive"
and said
China
has good reason to be "suspicious."
"Tibetans, in their own land, are physically controlled fully by gun -- but mind, never," he said.
The Dalai Lama accused
Beijing
of painting an inaccurate picture of modern day
Tibet
, which
China
has occupied for more than 50 years.
The sensitivity was clearly on display Monday when the
Beijing
government harshly criticized Harper for receiving the 72-year-old religious leader on Parliament Hill, something that's never happened during half a dozen previous visits.
And that unprecedented 40-minute meeting prompted
China
to condemn
Canada
for "disgusting conduct" and "gross interference" in internal Chinese affairs.
But the Dalai Lama, who was granted honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, was unapologetic.
"At age 16, I lost freedom. At age 24, I lost my own country. Now for almost half a century, I remain a refugee," he said, adding that even Mao Zedong, the father of modern Chinese communism, insisted on criticism from both inside and outside the party.
"Without criticism, including self-criticism, without that, like fish without water -- cannot survive," he said.
"Similarly, the Communist Party cannot survive without criticism."
Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama, fled
Tibet
in 1959 after a failed uprising against communist rule that cost hundreds of thousands of Tibetan lives. He's lived in exile in northern
India
ever since.
Last month he made an equally controversial visit to
Washington
D.C.
where he met U.S. President George W. Bush and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
Like members of the Bush administration, Harper's secretary of state for multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, made it clear
Ottawa
was unfazed by
China
's protests.
"I hope the entire world gets the message that attacking a 72-year-old Buddhist monk who advocates nothing more than cultural autonomy for his people is counterproductive," Kenney said.
To find out how you can see his speech Wednesday,
click here.
The Dalai Lama will also appear at the
Tibetan Canadian Culture Centre on
40 Titan Road in Etobicoke. Some of his speech there will be carried
on the web.
More on the Dalai Lama? Check out these links.
Dalai Lama Chronology
Dalai Lama Biography
Dalai Lama Wikipedia