Prague, Oct 30 (CTK) – The Czech government should release the commitments it has negotiated with China, the opposition Mayors and Independents (STAN) said on Sunday, in reaction to the recent pro-Chinese statement of the top officials of the state and a ministers’ agreement not to officially meet the Dalai Lama.
“In connection with the developments of the last several days, the STAN demands that the government release what pledges, written or factual, it has negotiated in relation to China,” the centrist party writes on its website.
STAN also wants to know what commitments concerning China President Milos Zeman has signed.
The party will call on Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek (both Social Democrats, CSSD) to provide an explanation.
The recent statement on Czech-Chinese relations signed by Sobotka, Zeman and the heads of the two houses of parliament makes the Czech Republic subordinate to the Eastern superpower, STAN said.
This statement was issued after Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) had an official meeting with the 81-year-old Tibetan Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
If the Czech-Chinese agreements include a pledge that Czech representatives may meet the Dalai Lama only in private, this is a scandal, regardless of the fact that all Czech government members nodded to it.
Zaoralek and Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (CSSD) accused Herman of breaking the promise that he would meet the Dalai Lama privately, but not officially. Herman said he never made any such promise.
STAN said the Dalai Lama is a widely respected spiritual authority who gave up political ambitions in Tibet and recognised China’s territorial integrity. Dozens of statesmen, government and parliament representatives met him at their offices, but not as a representative of a foreign state, the party said.
“The Czech Republic was long headed by a president who met the Dalai Lama almost every year and nobody even imagined that the country would threaten the territorial integrity of China in this way,” STAN says, referring to the late Vaclav Havel.
STAN supported the proposal of its councillor Jana Plaminkova to grant the honorary citizenship of Prague to the Dalai Lama, saying this would partly balance the unprecedented servility in international affairs expressed in the pro-Chinese statement of the four supreme constitutional officials.
