NEW DELHI: After a brief lull, the knives are out again with an agitated Beijing using the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh as a lever to threaten India with memories of 1962. The Indian government however, downplayed the differences, saying it does not visualise the tensions as a conflict. The Global Times, widely seen as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party of China, carried an opinion piece, published in the People’s Daily today, which accused India of pressuring the Tibetan monk to visit the disputed northeastern border in an effort to resolve the boundary dispute in its favour. “The Dalai Lama went to southern Tibet at this critical moment probably because of pressure from India,” Hu Shisheng, a researcher of South Asian studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times. “By doing so, he can please the country that has hosted him for years,” Hu said. According to Hu, The Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal may reap anti-China sentiments among the people. India appeared to have forgotten the incidents leading up to the border conflict of 1962. “The appearance and activities of the Dalai Lama in southern Tibet may foment anti-China sentiment among people living in the region,” Hu said. “When the conflict gets sharper and sharper, the Chinese government will have to face it and solve it in a way India has designed,” the researcher said. China claims 90,000 sq kms of Arunachal Pradesh, including the ancient Tawang monastery, a revered site of Tibetan Buddhism where the Dalai Lama first sought refuge when he fled Tibet in 1959, as its territory. India does not accept that claim and claims the border state as an “integral part” of its territory. The two countries have a decades-old unresolved boundary dispute, rhetoric over which has flared since the Dalai Lama expressed his intentions to visit the region. Speaking for the Indian government, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said he does not visualise the border dispute between India and China spiralling into a conflict. “I do not visualise any conflict on the border dispute between India and China,” Mukherjee said. “We have an institutional arrangement. Though there are divergences of views but, in the form of the special representatives of the Prime Ministers of both countries, they meet regularly — up to now more than a dozen meetings have taken place,” he said. “Both prime ministers agreed to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border and our economic cooperation, particularly trade, which is expanding very fast,” he said, alluding to the meeting last month between Indian PM Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Thailand. The Dalai Lama, meanwhile, raised Chinese hackles further by discounting China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh in general and the Tawang monastery, where he is visiting, in particular.

Nine executed over Xinjiang unrest

BEIJING: China has executed nine people over deadly ethnic unrest in its far-western Xinjiang region, regional authorities said on Monday, the first executions since the violence in July. “The first group of nine people who were sentenced to death recently have already been executed in succession, with the approval of the Supreme Court,” Hou Hanmin, spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government, told AFP. It was not clear when the executions took place. According to previous statements by the Xinjiang government, this first group consisted of eight members of the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority and one majority Han Chinese. China tried and convicted 21 defendants in October — nine were sentenced to death, three were given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve, a sentence usually commuted to life in jail, and the rest were given various prison terms. The violence erupted on July 5, pitting Uighurs against members of China’s dominant Han group, leaving 197 dead and more than 1,600 injured, according to an official toll. Han vigilantes then went on a rampage against Uighurs two days later, but the exact number of casualties from that day has never been divulged. The 21 defendants were convicted of crimes such as murder, intentional damage to property, arson, and robbery. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, condemned the executions. — AFP