Dalai Lama's South Africa conference ban causes uproar

[bemildred]

Source: Guardian.UK

Two of South Africa's Nobel peace prize winners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk, have pulled out of a Johannesburg conference to fight racism after what they branded as Pretoria's "disgraceful" decision to ban the Dalai Lama from attending following Chinese pressure.

The Nobel peace prize committee also said it would boycott this Friday's conference, which is dedicated to tackling racism ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

The row threatens to draw in Nelson Mandela, who, with his fellow South African laureates, invited the Tibetan spiritual leader, and further embarrasses South Africa, which has been accused of squandering its moral authority since ending apartheid by blocking UN security council moves to pressure rogue governments in Burma and Zimbabwe.

Tutu, who won the prize for his resistance to white rule, told Johannesburg's Sunday Independent newspaper he will not attend the conference to discuss how to use the World Cup preparations to combat racism and xenophobia if the Tibetan spiritual leader is not present.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/dalai-lama-south-africa-world-cup-ban

[applegrove]

1. Wow. Tutu never stops to amaze me.

[dave_p]

2. He never started for me

He wasn't a great liberation leader, but was happy to bask in the reflected glory of other's struggle. This isn't a dramatic pronouncement, it's just Tutu. Nice guy, don't mistake me, but no Gandhi.

[HamdenRice]

10. You obviously don't know his history. Tutu organized thousands, was like the ML King of S.Africa

Most people have little idea what Tutu actually did in South Africa, and for that matter, most Americans have little idea what Martin Luther King did in the US. Just as King's accomplishment was not "making a speech", Tutu's accomplishment was not being a "nice guy."

Both of them were primarily organizers of community resistance. King organized African Americans across the south in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was the chapters of that organization that ended segregation through non-violent resistance -- trying to register to vote, boycotting segregated facilities, and negotiating with white city leaders to end segregation.

Tutu did the same thing through the South African Council of Churches. The SACC had many affiliate organizations, but the most important was the Justice and Reconciliation Network. Thousands of young organizers spread across the country to help "clog" the apartheid system. Some of their most daring and successful campaigns were in the rural areas, where they managed to end South Africa's policy of forcibly relocating black communities into the homelands.

He also raised the funds for these efforts from international sources. At the same time as this resistance work, the SACC was also providing a massive program of social services and education to deprived communities.

While Tutu was heading this organization, his headquarters were bombed, his staff detained without trial, and he received constant death threats, although his elevation to the position of Anglican Archbishop of South Africa (the main denomination of white English speaking South Africans) made a direct apartheid government assassination almost impossible.

He also worked closely with the internal opposition, the United Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, through coordinated mass actions. It was the internal struggle of which Tutu was one of the most prominent leaders that caused the government to release the prisoners and begin negotiations.

Once the prisoners were released and the exiles allowed to come home and negotiations started, Tutu basically said his work was done, that political negotiations needed to be carried out by political leaders, and Tutu focused on less overtly political issues like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He was hardly just a "nice guy" and there's a reason he won the Nobel Prize while most of the other leaders were languishing in prison or exile.

[mdmc]

4. he is an amazing man

:toast:

[snot]

3. K&R'd -- let good deeds be known.

[IndianaGreen]

5. What do China and Israel have in common?

A pathological reaction to anyone that criticizes them.

Israel's occupation of Palestine: 41 years

China's occupation of Tibet: 58 years

[izquierdista]

6. And US money

Both of them have the U.S. right where they want them, shoveling piles of cash in their direction, no questions asked.

[IndianaGreen]

7. China has us by the cojones. Were they to cash their T-Bills

we would collapse overnight.

[Are_grits_groceries]

9. Pfffft..

China and the US are so closely linked now that if they crash our economy, their own wouldn't be far behind. They can make loud, honking pronouncements all they want. They don't dare start the house of cards falling.

[pampango]

13. That's one sign of progress in modern times. When countries are linked in a way that they share

a common fate, they are less likely to mess with each other.

In the old days when countries had little trade or interaction with each other, there was little economic downside to damaging another country. European countries fought wars with each other for centuries. Now that they share a common economic fate, these wars have stopped.

China could crash our currency, if they wanted, (as could Japan or Germany) but then they would lose a trillion dollars in currency that they could paper their walls with. We could damage their economy with tariffs. We both have leverage over the other.

[cali]

11. and so would they. It's a symbiotic relationship.

[izquierdista]

12. Symbiotic or parasitic?

It is said that the most successful parasites are those that don't kill off their host, but just continue to drain the host little by little, growing old and fat in the process.

[onestepforward]

8. Tutu is awesome!