Exiled Tibetan leader Lobsang Sangay on Monday said Aung San Suu Kyi’s by-election victory in weekend polls gave him hope that his troubled homeland would see an end to Chinese repression. Sangay, a 43-year-old Harvard scholar, was elected to the new post of prime minister of Tibet’s government-in-exile last August as exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama eases out of the political arena. “No one thought Aung San Suu Kyi will be released (from house arrest). Things happen. So we are absolutely certain our day will come,” Sangay told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. “It might look, some say, impossible and unrealistic… The success of every struggle is believing in oneself and believing in your movement,” he added. Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate released from years of house arrest in November 2010, was elected to Myanmar’s parliament in a historic victory on Sunday, following a host of reforms by the country’s nominally civilian government But Sangay repeated warnings that a spate of Tibetan self-immolations would continue unless China backed off its hardline policies in the vast region.
