News on the Dalai Lama visiting The University of Alabama at Birmingham:
Dalai Lama visit to UAB today draws hundreds of Tibetan supporters, Shugden sect protesters:
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- An appearance by the Dalai Lama at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) today for a scientific symposium drew hundreds of people -- including his supporters and some protesters -- to campus near the Alys Stephens Center.
Virtually all of the roughly 250-300 supporters that gathered along 13th St. South to welcome the religious leader to campus were Tibetan, with many coming to Birmingham for the weekend from Minnesota, home to a large community of Tibetan exiles.
The roughly 250 protesters, who were gathered at the northeast corner of the intersection of 13th St. and 10th Ave. South, were there in support of religious freedom for those who pray to the Buddhist deity Dorje Shugden.
They held up signs and chanted, "Stop the lying! Stop the lying!"
The protesters -- brought together by the California-based non-profit International Shugden Community (ISC) -- claim that the Dalai Lama has persecuted the members of that group and caused them to be mistreated and ostracized in Tibetan exile communities around the world, including India and the United States.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to be at UAB today to take part in a scientific symposium, according to a news release from the university on Oct. 14. The symposium will also feature "leading experts in the brain's healing power and how the brain changes," the release stated.
ISC spokesperson Len Foley said that members of the Shugden community have been barred from many businesses, monasteries and hospitals in Tibetan communities.
The protesters are all "regular people" who are traveling at their own expense to protest the Dalai Lama and what they say is the discrimination faced by the Shugden community, according to Foley.
Foley said the protesters 'have heard so many horrible, heart-wrenching stories of suffering all over the world, and a lot of the Tibetans here know friends who have had horrible things happen."
About 200 of the Tibetan supporters of the Dalai Lama came to Birmingham from Minnesota, according to Thupten Dadak of Minneapolis.
Dadak dismissed claims by the Shugden supporters that they have been oppressed or ostracized in Tibetan communities by the Dalai Lama. "The Dalai Lama is always fair," he said today near the UAB Hulsey Center on 13th St. as traditional Tibetan musicians beat drums nearby.
He referred to the Shugden community as "a cult" and suggested that they were in league with the Chinese government. "They are puppets,' he said.
"I think they are part of the Chinese effort to protest the Dalai Lama," Dadak said.
Foley denies a Chinese link to the Shugden movement. "They say so many crazy things about us, that we're agents of the Chinese government, that we are getting paychecks," he said. "There is not a single person here who has ever received a single check ever."
The protest was scheduled to continue until about 11 a.m. Another protest is scheduled to take place at Kelly Ingram Park downtown from 1-4 p.m. today, according to a news release from the ISC.
The protesters come from several states, including New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma, according to Rachael Jeffrey, an ISC spokesperson who was present at the protest.
Jeffrey estimated that "about 20-30" of the protesters are from Alabama.
The protest will follow the Dalai Lama when he travels to the Northeast, including New York City, according to Jeffrey.
Greg Garrison of AL.com spoke to Foley this week to learn more about the nature and aims of the protest.
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2014/10/dalai_lama_visit_to_uab_sympos.html
