DHARAMSHALA, September 16: Fourteen Nobel peace laureates have urged the South African president Jacob Zuma to allow the Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama to visit South Africa where the Tibetan leader was to attend a summit of Nobel peace prize winners in Cape Town next month, the first-ever meeting of its kind in Africa.
The Tibetan leader his participation after Pretoria denied him a visa last month, a move believed to have been made to avoid angering China, which allege that the Tibetan leader was a “splittist” and “a monk in wolf’s clothing.”
“We are deeply concerned about the damage that will be done to South Africa’s international image by a refusal – or failure – to grant him a visa yet again,” the group of fourteen signatories said in a letter sent to Zuma.
Signatories include Poland’s Lech Walesa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bangladeshi entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Northern Irish peacemakers David Trimble and John Hume.
The Dalai Lama has been denied visa thrice in the last five years, drawing public outcry by South Africans who see it as a betrayal of the commitment to human rights embraced by their government since the end of apartheid 20 years ago.
Two years ago, the country’s top court found that the government had acted unlawfully by dragging its heels on a visa application by the Tibetan until it was too late.
Meanwhile, China – South Africa’s biggest single trading partner, with two-way trade worth $21-billion in 2012 – has welcomed the move by South Africa.
The Nobel laureates said, “We understand the sensitivities involved – but would like to point out that His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, no longer holds any political office.” Instead, the group noted, he “would participate in the summit solely in his capacity as a globally respected spiritual leader”.
The Nobel summit in Cape Town on October 13 to 15 is backed by foundations representing four South African peace laureates – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk and Albert Luthuli. Along with the surviving South Africans – Tutu and de Klerk – the organisers say 13 individuals and eight organisations had confirmed that they would attend the summit, including former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
When the Tibetan leader was denied Visa in 2011, Tutu described the African National Congress government of Zuma as being “worse than the apartheid government”.
