Dalai Lama Fans Clash With Protesters
July 17, 2008,
Updated, 11:30 p.m. | As thousands of people, mostly of Tibetan and Nepalese ancestry, streamed out of Radio City Music Hall on Thursday afternoon, where they had gone to hear the Dalai Lama give a lecture on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, they found themselves in a chaotic scene on the Avenue of the Americas.
About 200 members of a Buddhist sect, the Western Shugden Society, were outside the hall protesting the Dalai Lama, who they said had persecuted monks who supported the sect.
Some among the thousands coming out of the lecture began shouting at the protesters.
The crowd began to swell, and eventually thousands were shouting “Long Live Dalai Lama” and waving dollar bills at the protesters, asserting that they had been paid by the Chinese government.
Police officers on horseback, and dozens on the ground, began scrambling to set up barriers and push the crowds off of the streets, but the avenue was closed for about 20 minutes around 5 p.m. Office workers stood at windows along Rockefeller Center’s office buildings, gazing down at the crowds, which grew louder and larger.
Some of the Dalai Lama supporters began approaching the protesters and were shoved away by police.
After his lecture to a sold-out house at Radio City, where some supporters paid as much as $1,000 a ticket, the Dalai Lama took questions that audience members had submitted in advance.
The second question was whether he had anything to say about the protesters outside, who had begun setting up long before the Dalai Lama’s lecture began at 2 p.m.
The Dalai Lama said he used to follow their practice, known as Dorje Shugden, from about 1951 until the early 1970s, but that he had given it up because it was intolerant of other Buddhist teachings.
“This is just spirit worship,” he said. “After I read more about it, I realized my mistake and dropped my practice.”
He added: “I think 99 percent of Tibetans follow my practice. Some small portion worship this spirit. I am committed to freedom of speech, freedom of talk. So I say to them, enjoy freedom of talk.”
He also argued that two past Dalai Lamas had restricted the practice, and that he was following tradition.
The Western Shudgen Society asserts that the Dalai Lama has more than a decade “been fostering a campaign of intimidation, humiliation, and ostracism” against practitioners of Dorje Shugden.
Kelsang Pema, a spokeswoman for the Western Shugden Society, said she had flown from England to engage in the protest. More than half of the protesters appeared to be Westerners, although Ms. Pema said 100 Tibetan monks also took part in the protest.
Although the crowd who attended the lecture at Radio City contained a sprinkling of Westerners, most were of Himalayan ancestry and they were the ones shouting at the protesters from across the Avenue of the Americas and from the north side of 50th Street.
The protesters were on the southwest corner of 50th and Sixth, behind police barricades.
There did not appear to be any arrests. Ms. Pema said of the Dalai Lama, “He’s a Hollywood monk.
If you ask him something serious, he smiles and laughs and pretends he doesn’t know English.”
(The Dalai Lama answered the question in English, with some help with words and phrases from a translator seated near him on the stage.)
Ms. Pema said people had come from 18 countries to participate in the protest.
She denied that her group had been paid by the Chinese government.
“We get no money from the Chinese. They can check our organization.
We’re clean.” The protesters handed out literature explaining their position.
