Firebombing attack on home was political message, Dalai Lama’s representative says

It was the crash of shattering glass that woke up the Dalai Lama’s representative, Dhundup Gyalpo, late at night last week. When he opened his bedroom door, he saw his house filled with billowing black smoke.

He smashed a bedroom window and managed to jump out, narrowly escaping death from smoke inhalation. The firebombing attack on his home near South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, was the second in three months, and he is certain it was meant as a political message.

“It was a tactic to teach me a lesson,” Mr. Gyalpo said. “It was an act of intimidation, to create a near-death experience for me.”

He did not want to comment on the perpetrators. But exiled Tibetan activists said it was part of a global rise in transnational repression by the Chinese government, and they called for an investigation of possible foreign-state involvement in the attack.

Canadian diplomats were among those who condemned the firebombing. “Tibetan Buddhists everywhere have the right to practice their faith without fear,” the Canadian High Commission in South Africa said.

“Hatred or violence against people of faith and belief – anywhere − is unacceptable,” it said in a statement on social media on the weekend.

Mr. Gyalpo arrived in South Africa in March as the latest representative of Tibet’s government-in-exile, which has had an office in the country since 1997. The office opened with the approval of then-president Nelson Mandela, after a request by the Dalai Lama a year earlier.

The first attack on Mr. Gyalpo’s home was on the night of July 6 – the Dalai Lama’s 91st birthday. Three petrol bombs, often called Molotov cocktails, were thrown at his home. Two did not explode, and the third exploded on his front steps, causing no significant damage.

The second attack, on the night of Oct. 14, was much more dangerous. The petrol bombs were hurled through the windows, triggering a fire that engulfed the home and destroyed most of Mr. Gyalpo’s belongings.

It is highly unlikely the attack was an ordinary criminal act, since nothing was stolen by the person or persons who entered the compound, and there is no reason to suspect South African groups as the perpetrators, Mr. Gyalpo said.

“I’ve done nothing political here,” he said. “I’m just spreading the message of non-violence, peace and compassion.”

Mr. Gyalpo said he has no intention of leaving South Africa. “I’m not going to run away. Our Tibetan brothers and sisters are in worse condition − some of them are committing self-immolation − so this is nothing.”

The South African government has grown steadily closer to China since 1998, when it first established diplomatic relations with Beijing. In recent years, China has become the country’s biggest trading partner and a key diplomatic ally. It has pressured South Africa to minimize its relations with both Taiwan and the exiled Tibetan government.

From 2009 to 2014, South Africa effectively blocked three proposed visits by the Dalai Lama by delaying its decision on whether to grant him a visa, after China made it clear that any visit would harm relations between the two countries.

Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid leader who died in 2021, was a close friend of the Dalai Lama. He denounced the South African government for failing to grant a visa to the Tibetan leader to visit Mr. Tutu for his 80th birthday in 2011.

His charitable foundation, the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, condemned the firebombing attacks. “No community in South Africa should have to go to sleep wondering whether their home will be set alight because of who they are, where they come from or what they believe,” the foundation said in a statement.

“This is the second such attack on the office. That an earlier attempt caused no damage gives no comfort; it tells us that whoever is responsible has returned with greater intent.”

The foundation urged the South African authorities to launch a full investigation and protect Mr. Gyalpo’s home.

“Whoever is responsible, this attack falls on a community that already lives with the loss of its homeland,” it said, noting recent reports on China’s tightening control of Tibetan religious and educational institutions.

Tibetan groups said the firebombing was just the latest in a series of attacks and threats against Tibetan representatives around the world. “This is an appalling and disturbing attack,” said Tenzin Rabga Tashi of the advocacy group Free Tibet in a statement Friday.

Students for a Free Tibet, a human-rights group based in New York, said the firebombing was an example of how China harasses and persecutes Tibetans and other exiled dissidents in an attempt to silence them.

And the International Tibet Network said the attack shows that exiled Tibetans need stronger protection from threats, espionage and abuse. “This event should serve as a wake-up call to the wider world about the transnational oppression faced by Tibetans,” it said.

With a report from James Griffiths in Hong Kong