Won’t Allow U.S. Congressional Group on Rights to Visit Tibet, China Says

China said Friday it would not allow a U.S. congressional delegation to visit Tibet, where pro-independence demonstrations and rioting have broken out recently.

“Matters concerning Tibet are the internal affairs of China in which the U.S. Congress has no right to meddle,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Visits by foreign tourists are also forbidden, “for the time being,” the ministry added.

California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) told a House hearing on Tibet on Wednesday that he and three other members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hoped to go to Tibet and investigate the recent protests as soon as permission is granted by the Chinese authorities.

Tibetan sources said more than a dozen people, including Buddhist monks and police, died during anti-Chinese rioting in Lhasa on Oct. 1. The official Chinese media reported six dead.

China’s senior leader Deng Xiaoping on Friday blamed Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader and U.S. congressmen for stirring up anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet.

Deng, in his first public comment on Tibet, said, “The Dalai Lama and a few U.S. congressmen have created a little bit of trouble for us, but this will not affect our overall good situation. On the contrary, all this has revealed their ignorance and arrogance, and exposed their true nature.”

Deng’s comments, in a meeting with Franz Josef Strauss, premier of the state of Bavaria in West Germany, were quoted by the official New China News Agency.

China has said violent pro-independence demonstrations in the Lhasa between Sept. 27 and Oct. 6 were sparked by statements the Dalai Lama made in September during a visit to the United States.