Kelsang Pema responds to comments by the Dalai Lama’s representative Tashi Wangdi
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Video Transcript
Tashi Wangdi: I think there is a lot of misunderstanding, I was trying to explain that there’s no ban. I was trying to tell them.
So there’s a lot of misunderstanding on that.
Kelsang Pema: Can we just have this for the record?
There is absolutely no misunderstanding!
There is a ban, there is discrimination, there is hypocrisy, and we request the world media, please investigate. Look yourself. It’s there; it’s evident. This man, this gentleman who kindly came to us talk is the only representative who has done that. He even agreed and we have it on record that the discrimination that’s happening in these monasteries and in society is wrong, and he said and he promised that he would check this.
So please the world media, just look, investigate.
Is he going to fulfill his words? Please that’s all.
Reporter: Can you tell me how long has that discrimination been happening, and what are your organization’s bases?
Kelsang Pema: It’s been happening since 1996, but aggressively since January this year. Now Tibetans are forced to take an oath. The oath has two parts. The first part says that they themselves do not and will not practice the prayer of Dorje Shugden. The second part clearly states that they will not materially, spiritually, socially support anybody who does. Families are divided. I’ve seen with it with my own eyes.
School children are separated and expelled from their communities. People cannot go shopping. They are not allowed to buy food if they do not have an identity card saying they do not practice Dorje Shugden.
People cannot travel, because they cannot get a visa. Why? To get a visa, they have to have an identity card.
That is not human rights! That is worse than what they are accusing China of!
Reporter: You say you have seen it with your own eyes?
Kelsang Pema: Yes, I have been there twice in the last month. I was requested on behalf of all of these Shugden practitioners to go and check if the allegations and the claims that were being made from the side of the victims were correct.
I can 100 percent guarantee they are correct, but the world media needs to check.
Reporter: Has the U.N. or any other humanitarian society checked about this?
Kelsang Pema: No because right now it’s coming to light.
Today it’s the first day because we had made a request and it had a deadline of 22nd April Indian time. That time passed at 10 o’clock US time, which is exactly the time when our demonstration began. We sent a letter to the Dalai Lama over one week ago requesting him to pay attention to this and to address the problems that are happening, the discriminations that are happening right now. He did not reply. The letter was sent by recorded delivery, by fax and by email to him and to every single member of his parliament. Nobody even acknowledge receipt.
Reporter: How many people do you think are affected?
Kelsang Pema: Millions, they are everywhere, every country.
This is a lineage practice. He is sitting in that teaching hall, or has been, and giving teachings from the same lineage that he is destroying by stopping this practice.
Reporter: So he has never been exposed before?
Kelsang Pema: No he has not. Why? Because people are frightened, because the people in India, they face persecution if they expose him. We, we’re not under him, we can expose, but we need the world’s press to go and look.
Reporter: And what are you guys again?
Kelsang Pema: We’re all members of the Western Shugden Society. We are individual practitioners. There is no leader, we’re under an umbrella organization talking with one voice and trying to accomplish one result, and that’s religious freedom.
Published: 29 Apr 2008