The Dalai Lama was criticised yesterday by prominent Tibetan radicals who say that his non-violent campaign for greater autonomy within China has failed and who are demanding a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Tibet’s spiritual leader has won international acclaim for eschewing violence since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising in 1959 and set up a government in exile in the Indian town of Dharamsala. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

On Sunday he stopped short of calling for an Olympic boycott after two days of rioting in the Tibetan capital, although he did call for an international inquiry. Tibetan radicals, who are organising protests around the world, criticised his conciliatory approach, contrasting it with the successful drives for independence in East Timor and Kosovo.

“China does not deserve the Olympics because the human rights situation has deteriorated,” Tsewang Rigzin, president of the radical Tibetan Youth Congress, told The Times. “Independence is the only solution.” His comments reflect the growing tensions among the 300,000 Tibetans living in exile, mainly in India and Nepal, with a few thousand across Western Europe and North America.

When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet he was followed by about 100,000 of his countrymen, most of whom did not question his decision to pursue a non-violent campaign. A few Tibetans fought a guerrilla campaign backed by the CIA, until funding dried up and they were kicked out of Nepal in 1974.

Tibetan exiles say that they still revere the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader but are divided between those who have lost interest in the cause and those who want a more radical approach. The latter group is increasingly vocal as young Tibetan exiles — most of whom were born outside their homeland — vent their frustration with the Dalai Lama’s “middle way”.

“I’m Tibetan but I’ve never seen Tibet,” said Tashi Phuntsok, a 28-year-old artist in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, where police fired teargas to disperse Tibetans protesting outside the UN office yesterday. “All my life, we’ve been campaigning peacefully — and what have we achieved?”

He and a growing number of young Tibetans support the Tibetan Youth Congress, which was founded in 1970 and claims at least 30,000 active members. It has advocated violence in the past, supports hunger strikes and other forms of protest not condoned by the Dalai Lama and reserves the right to use violence in the future.

Critics of such groups say that they play into the hands of the Chinese Government but the radicals respond that Tibetans have little to lose.

Jamyang Norbu, a writer who took part in the guerrilla campaign in the 1960s, said: “Nobody takes the middle way seriously any more. This is not non-violence, it is appeasement.”

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