U.S. Honors an Optimistic Dalai Lama

NEW YORK — The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Chinese-occupied Tibet, Friday received the first Raoul Wallenberg Congressional Human Rights Award and predicted that students fighting for democracy will prevail in China.

The exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader received the award, named after Swedish diplomat Wallenberg, from two congressmen for his decades of efforts to end China’s military occupation of Tibet.

The award came one day after the Chinese government strongly protested the approval by Congress of wide-ranging economic sanctions to protest suppression of pro-democracy students in Beijing.

Observers said the Dalai Lama’s award might exacerbate the already tense relations between the United States and China.

California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who presented the award along with Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), said the Dalai Lama has been the “quintessential leader of a global trend moving toward reconciliation and nonviolence.”

Wallenberg served in Hungary during World War II and helped save more than 100,000 Jews from Nazi gas chambers. He vanished into Soviet “protective custody” in Hungary in 1945.

The Dalai Lama, 54, told a news conference at the Waldorf Astoria that the June 3-4 events in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square dealt a “temporary setback” to pro-democracy movements in China.

“Eventually things will improve,” the bespectacled leader of 6 million Tibetan Buddhists said.

The Dalai Lama said that the “general atmosphere” around the world is towards democratic reforms and that “China, with the largest population, will eventually follow.”