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Dalai Lama marks Nobel anniversary as Western support wanes

AFP
afp.com 05 October 2014

As the Dalai Lama marked his 25th year as a Nobel laureate this week, a row over South Africa's failure to grant him a visa underscored the huge challenge facing the movement he launched more than half a century ago.

The Tibetan spiritual leader was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1989, amid international condemnation of Beijing following a deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square earlier that year.

The award catapulted the charismatic Buddhist monk into the global spotlight, and in the decade that followed he was courted by US presidents and Hollywood stars alike as he criss-crossed the world campaigning for greater autonomy in his homeland.

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The Dalai Lama himself accused South Africa of "bullying a simple person", using uncharacteristically undiplomatic language.

But South Africa is by no means alone in its reluctance to antagonise China, its largest trading partner.

Even Norway, one of the world's wealthiest countries and the home of the Nobel peace prize, snubbed the Dalai Lama when he visited earlier this year in what it called a "necessary sacrifice" to normalise its relations with China.

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Praise for Xi

Since then, the Dalai Lama has said he is "optimistic" about the current administration in Beijing, in what some see as a possible sign of a thaw in relations.

In an interview with AFP this week, he praised China's President Xi Jinping for cracking down on official corruption and seeking to introduce "proper rule of law".

"These things show he (Xi) is approaching these problems more realistically" than his predecessors, the Dalai Lama said.

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For Sangay and other moderates, the over-arching goal is to secure political and cultural freedoms and autonomy in Tibetan areas of China.

He believes the new generation of Tibetans inside Tibet will be the "most important factor" in deciding its future.

Young Tibetans "have not seen the Dalai Lama, nor they have met with the exile administration," he said. "But their sense of belonging to Tibetan identity... is very strong."

http://www.msn.com/

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Nobel laureates cancel South Africa meeting

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Oct. 2, 2014


Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama speaks to a crowd during an event marking 25 years since the leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in Dharmsala, India, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A group of Nobel peace laureates on Thursday suspended plans to hold an annual meeting in South Africa because they said the government there refused to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama.

The announcement came after retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, a periodic critic of South Africa's ruling party, described the government as a "lickspittle bunch" for its alleged deference to China, a close business partner.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is labeled a separatist by China. He had sought a South African visa so he could attend the meeting of Nobel peace laureates in Cape Town meant to honor the late South African president and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela.

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The South African government had said that the Dalai Lama canceled his planned visit while South Africa's diplomats in New Delhi were processing his visa application.

Tutu said it was shameful that the Dalai Lama cannot attend the Oct. 13-15 meeting to honor Mandela, who died last year. Tutu is a friend of the Dalai Lama and, like the Dalai Lama and Mandela, is also a fellow Nobel peace laureate. Tutu also accused the South African government of "kowtowing to the Chinese" and preventing the Dalai Lama from traveling to South Africa in 2011 to attend his 80th birthday party.

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Rainbow nation flags over Dalai Lama saga

Andrew Harding, Africa correspondent
4 October 2011 


An evening vigil outside the South African parliament on Monday 3 October to call on the South African government to grant the Dalai Lama a visa

So, democratic South Africa has chosen to put its crucial trading relationship with China above its commitment to free speech and an old friend.

The decision was hardly a surprise. Nor was the furious reaction from supporters of the Dalai Lama - and many others here - who called it "the darkest day", and a cowardly, hypocritical pandering to Beijing's bullying.

But what struck me most was the dispiritingly cheap way in which the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet was denied the opportunity to visit Cape Town, and attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu's 80th Birthday celebrations.

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Wretched year

Diplomacy can be a delicate business. Discretion often works best.

But the Dalai Lama visa saga comes towards the end of a wretched year for South African foreign policy.

Somewhere, in Pretoria's flip-flopping over the crisis in Ivory Coast and the revolution in Libya, there is a principled commitment to neutrality, negotiated solutions and respect for the integrity of sovereign states.

And yet on each occasion, South Africa has appeared "have-it-both-ways" indecisive, reactive and incapable of articulating a clear position. China is important to South Africa's economy.

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shameful for a country and its current leaders and doubly so because these current leaders themselves fought against discrimination in the not so distant past.

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