A furious Archbishop Desmond Tutu condemned the South African government after the Dalai Lama said he was forced to pull out of Tutu’s 80th birthday celebrations because he had not been granted an entry visa, reports The Guardian.
“Our government - representing me! - says it will not support Tibetans being viciously oppressed by China,” Tutu said at a press conference. “You, President Zuma and your government, do not represent me. I am warning you, as I warned the [pro-apartheid] nationalists, one day we will pray for the defeat of the ANC government.”
Tutu had invited his fellow Nobel peace laureate to deliver a lecture to mark his milestone birthday in Cape Town on Friday.
Officials from the archbishop emeritus’s office started the visa application processin June but met a series of bureaucratic delays.
On Tuesday the Dalai Lama’s office finally gave up on the application for the 76-year-old.
“His holiness was to depart for South Africa on 6 October, but visas have not been granted yet,” a spokesperson for the office said. “We are, therefore, now convinced that, for whatever reason or reasons, the South African government finds it inconvenient to issue a visa to … the Dalai Lama.”
Asked if he felt the Tibetan spiritual leader had in effect been banned from the country, Tutu replied: “To all intents and purposes, yes. This is the Dalai Lama. Incredible. The Dalai Lama, anywhere in the world, they have problems finding a venue that can contain the people who want him. He goes to New York and Central Park is overflowing. The discourtesy is mindblowing.”
South African foreign ministry officials have consistently denied accusations they have been bowing to pressure from Beijing.
Asked for his reaction to the Dalai Lama’s decision, a spokesman, Clayson Monyela, said: “We don’t have a reaction. He’s cancelled his trip and that’s it. We have not said no. We’ve not refused him a visa; the visa was still being processed. It’s only on 20 September that he submitted his full paperwork. In some countries a visa can take two months. I don’t know why people are criticising the government.”
A report in the Wall Street Journal said the visa application was awkwardly timed, coinciding with South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s trip last week to China, where the two countries signed a raft of commercial agreements, including one trade-financing deal valued at $2.5 billion, according to the deputy president’s spokesman, Thabo Masebe.
Mr. Masebe said the Dalai Lama’s visa request didn’t come up in meetings with Chinese leaders.