The Dalai Lama will be honored this week in Washington DC with a Congressional Gold Medal.
While here he will meet with congressional leaders and President Bush.
The reaction from China? Typically apocalyptic:
"We are furious," Mr. Zhang said. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world."
Since China's crushed an uprising in Tibet in 1959 its policy has been to import as many ethnic Chinese settlers as possible into Tibet so as to crush Tibetan culture, which is centered around a unique form of Buddhism led by the Dalai Lama. To that end it has recently built the world's highest railroad into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in order to import settlers and materials even faster than before.
China is engaging in a campaign to culturally annihilate Tibetan Buddhism. Everything China does in Tibet is done with that one aim in mind. After the Dalai Lama's associates chosea new Panchen Lama named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who is the second-highest lama after the Dalai Lama, China kidnapped the young boy and his family and they've not been heard from since that point.
China has every right to issue all the bellicose statements it wants on the issue of Tibet. But the United States Congress is standing with the Tibetan people by extending the honor of a congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama and our government should continue to advocate on behalf of a peaceful, free Tibet.