A little boy in a yellow shirt stands or sits in front of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans. Then Tenzin Gyatso, as the Dalai Lama is called in real life, takes the boy’s chin, brings it to his face and kisses him on the mouth. The Dalai Lama then asks, “Can you suck my tongue?” and sticks his tongue out at the child. The scene is accompanied by the laughter of the bystanders, one takes cell phone photos.
This short video clip has been circulating on the Internet since the weekend and has triggered sharp criticism worldwide. According to media reports, the scene was recorded in February in Dharamsala in northern India, where the Dalai Lama lives in exile. The little boy had previously asked him if he could hug him, but this cannot be seen in the video.
The Dalai Lama tweeted that he regretted the incident: “His Holiness would like to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as to his many friends around the world, for the pain his words may have caused.” The tweet continued, “His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful manner, even in public and in front of cameras.”
But this apology is not enough, say those affected by abuse: the Dalai Lama is downplaying the incident, the SNAP group said. The acronym stands for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “We would like to know how many other such ‘playful’ actions have taken place in the past between the Dalai Lama and unsuspecting visitors,” it said in the opinion further.
It was “deeply disturbing” to see an 87-year-old man asking a young boy to perform such an “overtly sexual act” in public. SNAP is the oldest support group for people who have been abused in a religious context. It was founded in 1989 in the USA by victims of Catholic priests.
“Imagine if a bishop would have done that”
“The Dalai Lama clearly crossed a line,” says Agnes Wich. She is a member of the German organization for those affected, Eckiger Tisch, and works with the Brave Movement, an international organization for those affected. “Imagine if a bishop had done that on a public stage. The boy’s body language is clear, how he recoils.”
The German Buddhist Union (DBU) initially did not want to comment on the current incident when asked by SZ. However, she referred to the Dalai Lama’s apology and to an earlier statement from September. At that time, a multi-part television documentary on abuse in Buddhist communities had appeared on Arte. “The Board and Council of the German Buddhist Union express their deepest sympathy to all victims of sexualized violence,” the DBU wrote at the time. There had been sexualised violence in Buddhist communities and some of these had been covered up for decades.
In some Buddhist communities there is a lack of reliable structures to address and limit abuse. The DBU is aware of this and has therefore adopted a “Voluntary Ethical Self-Declaration” for its member organizations and appointed persons of trust.
Abuse allegations against Buddhist leaders are not new. As early as the 1990s, women raised allegations against the late Sogyal Lakar Rinpoche, a close confidante of the Dalai Lama. Sogyal always dismissed these incidents as baseless allegations by individuals. In August 2017, the Southgerman newspaper then, however, from an open letter from eight longtime students of Sogyal. In August 2017 he announced his resignation as a spiritual teacher, he died in Thailand in 2019.