Letter to Radio Free Asia (RFA)

HH the Dalai Lama, alongside Radio Free Asia (RFA) President Libby Liu, addresses RFA staff on July 11, 2011.

This letter was sent to the editor of Radio Free Asia together with a parcel of educational brochures, booklets and DVDs produced by DorjeShugden.com

Dear Editor,

Greetings! First, we wish to congratulate you for your many years of providing a respected news service to many people.

We understand that Radio Free Asia was created in the late 1990s as a private, not-for-profit corporation to “provide information to people living under repressive regimes in Asia.” We have great respect for the media and for global efforts of radio services like yourselves to share information and knowledge with people everywhere.

However, we do not understand why, if RFA proclaim yourselves to be truthful, impartial and accurate sources of information, there are many issues within the Tibetan exiled community that are not covered by you. In fact, it would even seem that you avoid such subjects altogether. One clear example of this is the ban on the Buddhist Protector Deity Dorje Shugden. This is a prevalent and very pressing issue within the Tibetan community in exile, but this is hardly, if ever, covered by RFA.

This ban has caused monasteries to be divided, families to be split apart and a significant proportion of the Tibetan communities in India and Nepal to be completely ostracized and denied any welfare or basic civil rights. The practice of Dorje Shugden has been so significant for thousands of practitioners and for hundreds of years; but now, a purely spiritual practice has entered a political arena and led to the continued repression of many today.

As a media agency which wishes to be of service to “people living repressive regimes in Asia”, should this topic not be of grave concern to you? The Dorje Shugden practitioners are certainly still living under a very repressive regime today but have such little support or help. As the media, you have access to reach millions of people. Your fair and impartial coverage of this issue would be of such great support to Shugden practitioners, to raise awareness of their plight and the difficulties they suffer in a community which denies them the most basic religious freedoms.

We would also like to draw your attention to the very firm recent allegations that U.S. funding has been misspent, quite possibly on the suppression of Dorje Shugden practitioners and on other activities that directly contravene exiled Tibetans’ human rights and freedoms. We call on you, as a responsible and truthful news agency, to please include this in your investigations and reports.

We enclose here some educational information about Dorje Shugden which we hope will help you to gain a better understanding of this Protector and to see that the negative claims against this practice are grossly inaccurate and very harmful.

We urge you to widen the scope of your news coverage to be fairer and to take into consideration very pressing issues like these. Then will you emerge to be a truly democratic, free and respectable news source and hope for many.

Yours truly,

DorjeShugden.com | DorjeShugden.net | XiongDeng.com

The letter written by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, in protest of the dismissal of RFA’s Tibetan Service Director Jigme Ngapo