Dalai: Plan to swamp Tibet with 1m Chinese

London, May 24: The Dalai Lama has said that China is contemplating to swamp Tibet with 1 million ethnic Chinese people after the Olympics in an effort to dilute Tibetan culture and identity.

"We have received information that after the Olympics, 1 million Chinese are going to settle in the autonomous region of Tibet," the Dalai Lama said in an interview published in the Guardian on Saturday.

He said, "There is every danger of Tibet becoming a truly Han Chinese land and Tibetans becoming an insignificant minority. Then the very basis of the idea of autonomy becomes meaningless."

The Tibetan spiritual leader has been pressing for religious autonomy in Tibet within the sovereignty of China.

He said that there has been an increasing influx of Chinese settlers into Tibet in recent years as transport has improved, but the exact figures are a matter of dispute.

A 2000 census indicated that there were 2.4 million Tibetans in the region and 159,000 Han Chinese who are in majority in Lhasa, the regional capital.

However, China has denied carrying out any deliberate settlement policy aimed at the dilution of Tibetan culture and points instead to the benefits brought to the region by economic development and investment.

The 72-year-old monk said, over-settlement and over-exploitation of Tibet was threatening the quality and flow of rivers flowing out of the Tibetan highlands, including the Yangtze, the Yellow River, the Indus, the Mekong and the Ganges.

"Due to carelessness these rivers have been polluted and also reduced, and I think billions of people’s lives depend on these rivers," the Dalai Lama said.

"There has been mining without proper care, deforestation, irrigation without proper planning. In some valleys, new diseases have developed which some specialists believe is the result of water pollution," he said. His remarks comes after a meeting on Friday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. (PTI)