Trump’s top advisor calls news claiming Donald Trump declined Dalai Lama’s meeting request fake, demands retraction

By Lobsang Tenchoe

DHARAMSALA, Jan 18: The Hindu, an English language Indian newspaper has published a fake news article online claiming that the US president-elect Donald Trump has turned down the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s request for a meeting.

Michael Pillsbury, a top adviser of Donald Trump’s transition team, on a visit to China, revealed that the US President-elect had declined the Dalai Lama’s request for a meeting, signalling the new administration’s openness to a policy review on Tibet, Atul Aneja, the Hindu’s Associate Editor (China) wrote in the article.

16128817_1395103140534092_745706310_nThe Dalai Lama is bound to have a downstream impact on India, which hosts the Tibetan leader, Aneja added.

However, few hours after the publication of the article, Michael Pillsbury called it a fake news and demanded the report be retracted in a tweet.

“Fake news retraction demanded from Mr Atul Aneja in The Hindu online faked anti-Trump news. Trump did not reject meeting Dalai Lama,” Pillsbury twitted from his twitter handle Michael Pillsbury@mikepillsburry.

Pillsburry, the author and a long time American defense policy advisor, has written an email to the political head of the Tibetan Administration, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay to dismiss the fake news, according to a report published on Tibet.net, the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration.

‘Pillsbury wrote me an email last night rubbishing the news and said he supports a meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and US President-elect Donald Trump,’ the report quoted Sikyong Lobsang Sangay as saying.

In 2007, N.Ram, then Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu and a member of the family-owned publication, had written controversial articles in The Hindu, (“The Politics Of Tibet: A 2007 Reality Check”, July 5, 2007) and Frontline (“Future Tibet”, July 14-27, 2007) following his five-day visit to the Chinese occupied Tibet. In the articles, he presented an oddly prosperous picture of the situation in Tibet under Chinese regime acknowledging and justifying the Chinese policies in the region.