Exiled former Tibetan leader Lobsang Sangay said any successor to the Dalai Lama appointed by China “is going to be a fake one”. He also likened Beijing’s ethnic unity law to “an ethnic erasure”, said Tibetan concerns had been “downgraded a bit” in US-China talks and accused China of failing to warn of the deadly August floods on the Nepal-Tibet border.

Speaking to FRANCE 24, Lobsang Sangay, who headed the Tibetan government-in-exile from 2011 to 2021, rejected Beijing’s claim to choose the 91-year-old Dalai Lama’s successor. “The one selected by his office and by our monks will be the real one,” he said, rather than “the one appointed by China, which is going to be a fake one”.

Beijing’s law on “promoting ethnic unity and progress”, which came into force on July 1, is “like an ethnic erasure or assimilation”, Sangay said, warning that it “can extend beyond China’s border”.

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