Dalai Lama not to attend Mandela funeral: official

[FOX80]

The Dalai Lama, who has twice since 2009 been denied a visa for South Africa, is not planning to attend his fellow Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela's funeral, his spokesman said Sunday.

"He has no plans to go," spokesman Tenzin Takhla told AFP in the northern Indian hilltop town of Dharamsala where the Tibetan spiritual leader is headquartered.

Takhla did not say why the Dalai Lama would not attend Mandela's national memorial service on Tuesday or the December 15 burial at his boyhood home of Qunu.

But the Dalai Lama was controversially denied a visa to South Africa in 2011 after being invited to give a lecture as part of celebrations for the 80th birthday of Mandela's fellow anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu.

It was the second time that Pretoria had denied the Dalai Lama entry after refusing him a visa in 2009.

The Dalai Lama has been based in India since he fled China in 1959 followed a failed anti-Beijing uprising in his homeland.

China seeks to curb his overseas travels, and warns foreign governments that any visit by the spiritual leader would harm relations.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of being a separatist and of fomenting trouble in his homeland. The Dalai Lama says he merely seeks more autonomy for his people though non-violent means.

 

[Raphael]

No surprise. Mandela constantly snubbed the DL and his phony cause. He knew that his reputation as the world's leading activist against oppression would take a hit if he associated himself with a poser like the DL, whose 'movement' was always a media-driven propaganda offensive, which is why he took pains to distance himself from the DL, and always tried to step up relations with China.

It makes sense that someone as petty as the DL would try to 'counter-snub' him after his death. The sad truth is that DL is about to join Mandela, but whereas Mandela lived to 95 and enjoyed an incredibly fulfilling life, the DL will be remembered, if at all, as the last remnant to a feudal slaving theocracy, a pretender to a non-existent throne, and some exiled refugee who was one step removed from being homeless and living on the streets, constantly dependent on others' pity and charity.

 

[JayAtl]

No surprise. Mandela constantly snubbed the DL and his phony cause. He knew that his reputation as the world's leading activist against oppression would take a hit if he associated himself with a poser like the DL, whose 'movement' was always a media-driven propaganda offensive, which is why he took pains to distance himself from the DL, and always tried to step up relations with China.

It makes sense that someone as petty as the DL would try to 'counter-snub' him after his death. The sad truth is that DL is about to join Mandela, but whereas Mandela lived to 95 and enjoyed an incredibly fulfilling life, the DL will be remembered, if at all, as the last remnant to a feudal slaving theocracy, a pretender to a non-existent throne, and some exiled refugee who was one step removed from being homeless and living on the streets, constantly dependent on others' pity and charity.

keep your propaganda for the home grown bots like you!

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