"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Famous words according to The Right Honorable Lord Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton.
There is no check and balance in the CTA as the Dalai Lama held absolute power, not just as the political head but the spiritual head also. To question him would be to question a Buddha and needless to say not many did, because the fate that would befall them was not something one would expect from a Buddha.
"Sharpened bamboos were driven under the finger-nails, a punishment introduced into Tibet by the Manchus. Numerous floggings were inflicted with rods of willow on the bared back and buttocks, each of a hundred lashes or more....
The Tibetan criminal code is drastic. In addition to fines and imprisonment, floggings are frequent, not only of people after they have been convicted of an offence, but also of accused persons, and indeed witnesses, during the course of the trial. For serious offences, use is made of the pillory as well as of the cangue, which latter is a heavy square wooden board round the neck. Iron fetters are fastened on the legs of murderers and inveterate burglars. For very serious or repeated offences, such as murder, violent robbery, repeated thefts, or serious forgery, the hand may be cut off at the wrist, the nose sliced off, or even the eyes gouged out, the last more likely for some heinous political crime. In former days those convicted of murder were put into a leather sack, which was sewn up and thrown into a river.....
The Dalai Lama was indeed an absolute dictator; more so as regards his own country than Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini in theirs."
The above was extracted from "Portrait of a Dalai Lama", where Sir Charles Bell described punishment ordered by the 13th Dalai Lama.
In “Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth,” Michael Parenti quotes a western Buddhist practitioner saying old Tibet was, “much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.” Of the examples Parenti provides, the fifth Dalai Lama” in 1660 crushed a rebellion by “the Kagyu sect, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, even the offspring ‘like eggs smashed against rocks...in short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.’” Until 1959, Tibetan society had a huge chasm of haves and havenots, where rich landlords and lamas controlled vast amounts of wealth and land, contrasting the common Tibetan population who were mainly serfs and slaves."
Parenti also brings up evidence of torture: “In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment used by Tibetan overlords.” Among the items were, “instruments to cut off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips and special implements for disemboweling." There were “photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and of a woman who was raped, then had her nose sliced away.”
The “justification” of conditions in old Tibet was based on the myth of karma: “The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives, thus having to accept their present existence as karmic atonement.”
So can any kind of infliction of pain on another be called simply the actions of karma? I am sure many people think that the oppression on Dorje Shugden practitioners is simply a manifestation of their karma. I beg to disagree.
