British Prime Minister barred ministers from meeting the Dalai Lama

[Namdrol]

First Taiwan, now UK, who's next to ban the Dalai Lama? CTA are you not worried? Do you still want to waste time in the silly ban of Dorje Shugden? Wake up!!!


DHARAMSHALA, December 3: Revelations by a senior British member of parliament has shed light on a "blanket prohibition" that 10 Downing Street had thrown on its ministers on meeting the Dalai Lama during his UK visit this June.

British daily The Telegraph reported that two of its ministers Tim Loughton and Norman Baker were barred from meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader over lunch at the eleventh hour. The planned meeting then had coincided with crisis talks that PM David Cameron was holding over Eurozone countries at the G20 summit in Cancun, Mexico. China was in talks about offering £27billion, into a fighting fund expected to be used up by the International Monetary Fund to bail out Eurozone economies.

In July, the pair had written a private letter to PM Cameron, strongly protesting the manner in which way they were muzzled and complained about the “tremendous pressure” put on them to skip the meeting. The pair said they felt British policy over China was “tantamount to saying that British foreign policy on Tibet is whatever China wants it to be.”
 
The Dalai Lama had visited UK between June 14 and 23 and met with fellow Nobel Peace laureate and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi besides interacting with a number of religious leaders and lawmakers.

“We feel we have to write to you to express our concern and annoyance with regard to the inflexible instruction given last week to ministers, prohibiting any contact whatsoever with the Dalai Lama during his visit to the UK,” the two ministers said in the letter.

The pair noted that their absence at the private lunch was “deeply embarrassing” in terms of their longstanding Tibetan connections and expressed surprise over how the Government could impose a “blanket prohibition on a minister meeting a religious leader in private in a non-ministerial capacity.”

They further said that although the government had earlier cleared their meeting, the then-foreign minister Jeremy Browne’s last minute intervention “crossed the line” and was “frankly just plain wrong.”
 
Baker is honorary president of the Tibet Society and Loughton, who was sacked from his ministerial post in September, is a member of the Tibet Society council.

The same month, China had threatened to pull its Olympic athletes out of their training camp in Leeds, due to a scheduled visit by the Dalai Lama to the city. Chinese officials asked Leeds City Council to put pressure on the organisers to cancel the Dalai Lama’s visit to attend the Yorkshire International Business Convention as its keynote speaker. The visit however went on as per schedule.

In May, the Dalai Lama met with PM Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg in London. The meeting went down badly in Beijing, which urged the UK to “stop conniving at and supporting” Tibetan separatist attempts.

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=32594&article=A+month+after+his+meeting+PM+Cameron+barred+ministers+from+meeting+the+Dalai+Lama

[WisdomBeing]

This is nothing personal against the Chinese but it disturbs me that MY sovereign government is kowtowing to another sovereign nation over a religious issue. I wonder - if these Ministers were Buddhist, would it have impacted the ‘ban’ on their meeting the person who would be important in their spiritual path? Or would it not matter because a good relationship with China would mean more trade with Britain therefore that supersedes all other concerns including humanitarian? Do you think that by banning the Dalai Lama, we would have more ‘made in Britain’ items in China? I have a suspicion that it is more likely that we will have more ‘made in China’ items in our stores.

After the South African debacle which has now declared that it was wrong for the Dalai Lama to have been rejected a visa to enter the country, now it is Britain’s turn to bungle the issue. Taiwan has been the most upfront about the ban because i guess China is in its backyard so she had better play nice.

The pair said they felt British policy over China was “tantamount to saying that British foreign policy on Tibet is whatever China wants it to be.

It certainly seems like that to me, David Cameron!

Going back to the topic at hand though - i wonder how the CTA feels about the Dalai Lama being banned... perhaps they can empathise with Dorje Shugden practitioners now.

[diamond girl]

Dear WB,
Isn't the UK already flooded with "made in China" products from food to fashion? I tot your this comment was funny but carries so much truth.

It is sad to see that no matter what and who says how great being religious/spiritual is, the fact is politics and economics hails above spirituality/religion. Then again when our time comes to an end, we cannot bring any of our economic wealth nor political power with us. All that just disintegrates with death.

I guess if I were sitting there weighing my choices of an offer of 27 billion pounds versus being friendly with some monk, I would seriously be swayed by the money...a lot of money. But, I would definitely be more tactful about the situation and not so blatantly "Ban" a private lunch. And I do stress the word private. Not like it was some world stage forum! So politically wrong.

The hypocrisy is deafening. Religion is obviously not a practice but a weapon in the larger scale of things. To people like this, even at death religion is a weapon - a weapon to get to heaven and peace - Rest in Peace.

[Big Uncle]

I think this is the sign of our times. I am not surprise that England is doing this. Frankly speaking, there's nothing that England can do for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause that has not really been done or said. I am not trying to be bitchy but the Chinese are just too sensitive over the issue.

With the spate of self-immolations happening within its borders, I am not surprised that the Chinese are reacting in this manner. Anyway, very few countries can withstand the allure of economic ties with the Chinese these days and that itself is a powerful bargaining tool that got many countries bowing to Chinese pressure.

[Ensapa]

I think this is the sign of our times. I am not surprise that England is doing this. Frankly speaking, there's nothing that England can do for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause that has not really been done or said. I am not trying to be bitchy but the Chinese are just too sensitive over the issue.

With the spate of self-immolations happening within its borders, I am not surprised that the Chinese are reacting in this manner. Anyway, very few countries can withstand the allure of economic ties with the Chinese these days and that itself is a powerful bargaining tool that got many countries bowing to Chinese pressure.

It's not just England, but there is nothing any country of the world can do about the whole Tibet situation. England barring their ministers from seeing the Dalai Lama sounds kind of odd, as if meeting the Dalai Lama for them is a bad or dangerous thing, somehow. Overall, it does not leave a good impression of how England is treating the Dalai Lama because why is there a need for the British prime minister to bar their ministers from seeing the Dalai Lama?

If Britain loses China's support, they will crumble economically. At this present moment, no country dares offend China, not even if they respect the Dalai Lama very much.

[jessicajameson]

@diamond girl Your posts are really funny to read! I totally agree with you. £26 billion versus a private meeting/lunch with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. i.e. A £26 billion private lunch!

If I was not a Buddhist, I would seriously be swayed to help my country come out of an economic crisis (although, really, £26 billion will only give the EU a smaller negative debt figure at this point in time), and push for my cabinet ministers not to meet HHDL. However, it didn't seem like it was done very tactfully!

How pathetic to see the West at China's every whim! The tables have turned. Now, to get China to remember their history of practicing Dorje Shugden... Hey! The emperors of China were emanations of Manjushri...

A snip-it from the "Emperors of China" article: http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/features/emperors-of-china/)

"He had some very important questions to ask for Dorje Shugden’s prophecy and came to the Lhasa Trode Kangsar Protector Palace and, in front of the image of the Dharmapala, burned the questions he had written in Chinese, and demanded that the Dharmapala give clear prophesies in answer to his questions during an invocation the following day.

When Dorje Shugden was invoked the next day, he gave explicit powerful answers to the questions in the correct order. Trungtang, with delighted conviction, informed the Emperor Dao Guang who awarded a proclamation of praise to Gyalchen (Dorje Shugden) of the Trokang Temple with a pandit’s hat. There, in the center of a large stone courtyard, inside a pitched tent, in an elaborate auspicious ceremony, over the door of the protector palace was offered the pandit’s award.

The Trokang oracle, the temple monks, and general chief monks, with the regent Ratreng Rinpoche, the Chinese Amban, the Kashag, and Shabpa as chief attendees, Tibetan and Chinese people of all ranks were offered a feast and had a huge festival."

[Ensapa]

Well, now that you mentioned, it is quite well known that Emperor Kangxi himself, one of the Qing dynasty's most cultured and revolutionary emperors in China who even developed the first dictionary for the Chinese language and who revived many of the arts and cultures for China is actually an emanation of Dorje Shugden. Then, Qianlong emperor's Guru is Chankya Rolpa Dorje. Last but not least, BodhiDharma himself, the founder of the Zen school is actually the reincarnation of Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen. Manjushri's seat on our earth is Wutai Shan in China. All of these means that Dorje Shugden has a very strong link to China. And now that China is powerful, nobody can say no to them or offend them in any way....

[Namdrol]

CTA should really take heed and be anxious about their future, the countries that ban/not supporting Dalai Lama are not some tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, they are among the biggest economy and most influential countries like Taiwan and UK.

Freeing Tibet is a losing cause, sorry to say, but instead of spending time and energy to fight for the cause, no matter how futile it is, CTA tried to divert the attention of their failure to a god, that might work a hundred years ago, but not in the modern era.

[beggar]

Putting aside all the complex politics to do with China, let's look at it this way. It doesn't surprise me anymore that governments of leading countries are wanting to have less and less to do with the exiled Tibetan community. A simple question - what benefit do they get, on any level, from maintaining this relationships with the Tibetans? How does it help them? And how does it help the Tibetans?

The fact that you'd probably have to think quite hard to answer this is indication enough of how little the Tibetans really contribute to the world - well, certainly not enough for countries to want to stand up for them.

Another thing. Even if they were a small population, having a strong, focused and fair government might still help them to win the favour of larger nations wanting to help them. But the CTA spend so much of their time on small and petty issues. From the point of view of the rest of the world, this is a governing body who is spending so much time, energy and resources on the suppression of a religious practice and all those who follow it. Is this really what is done and respected in the 21st century? For a country that is fighting for freedom, they sure are doing a good job shooting themselves in the foot by NOT giving freedom to their own community! How can any one take their fight for freedom seriously when they are repressing their own people and allowing their own already-small and exiled community fall apart at the seams? They've even made their monasteries - the sacred center of their community - split. And yet they want to return to a country of 6 million and speak of unification and unity?

Unfortunately, I don't think they even see the irony in all this.

[WisdomBeing]

Isn’t schism one of the deadly sins? Simply lying already breaks our refuge vows. The ban on Dorje Shugden does both of this – cause schism and also it is a big fat lie because on the one hand, the CTA is preaching unity and freedom for Tibet, yet the reality is that there is no unity for Dorje Shugden practitioners nor do they have freedom. Not only do they not have freedom, they are actively discriminated against. How can that be at all Buddhist!

The CTA, as the secular representation of the Tibetan diaspora, MUST take the SECULAR view and stand up for the rights of ALL Tibetans, whether Dorje Shugden practitioners or Bon practitioners or even Satanic worshippers! The CTA already has zero legal standing. It does not even have a country. The Tibetan Spiritual Leader – while getting popular public support in supposedly strong countries like the United States and the UK, does NOT have the political support Tibet needs to make a difference. Yet the CTA stands on its high horse to destroy the lives of Dorje Shugden practitioners. Wake up CTA! STOP the hypocrisy and lift the ban NOW, or see Tibetans turn against you as they become more educated while in exile in these developed and developing countries, and their eyes open to the reality of the inefficacy of the CTA.

[Ensapa]

CTA should really take heed and be anxious about their future, the countries that ban/not supporting Dalai Lama are not some tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, they are among the biggest economy and most influential countries like Taiwan and UK.

Freeing Tibet is a losing cause, sorry to say, but instead of spending time and energy to fight for the cause, no matter how futile it is, CTA tried to divert the attention of their failure to a god, that might work a hundred years ago, but not in the modern era.

From what I do know and realize, as much as the US backs the Dalai Lama and as famous the Dalai Lama is in the world, nobody really particularly cares about the Tibet cause save for a select few really 'special' individuals who seem to have an idealized image of Tibet in their heads (which will probably rapidly change after they visit Dharamsala for real) and basically, the Tibet cause is a very temporary and unimportant cause when compared to the spreading of the Dharma, so why put so much effort in it?

I will not be surprised if in the near future, the Dalai Lama would drop the whole independence/autonomy thing altogether when the time is right.

[Gabby Potter]

In my opinion, as the ban issue is attracting more attention, there are more people who go against His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I think that this is a bad sign because people are losing faith towards His Holiness and at the same time, they are also losing faith in Buddhism.