Australia not standing up to China: Tibetan PM

Melbourne, Dec. 8 (ANI): Australia and the rest of the world lack the courage to stand up to China on human rights abuses, the Prime Minister of the exiled Tibetan Government, Samdhong Rinpoche, has claimed.

In Australia at the invitation of the Parliament of the World's Religions conference, Rinpoche said countries merely appeased China out of fear or greed.

"The small countries appease China due to fear, the bigger countries appease China due to greed," he said in Melbourne today.

"The human rights and democracy is not important.The market is more important. So, we are not satisfied with the behaviour of outside states and powers," news.com.au quoted Rinpoche, as saying.

Rinpoche, who has lived in exile in Dharamsala, the base of the Dalai Lama, since fleeing Tibet in 1959, said that no grudge is held against leaders who do not meet the Dalai Lama.

"Not meeting, or not welcoming the Dalai Lama, we have no grudge," Rinpoche said.

"But what we are disappointed with is the entire human approach as far as human rights is concerned. The problem was not confined to China," he said.

Little progress was being made by the international community to stop human rights abuses in other countries, including on the African continent. But China, with one of the world's largest populations, was one of the worst offenders, he claimed.

"But the world has no courage to stop it, or to improve it," Rinpoche said. (ANI)