STOP THE LAMA LOVE-IN – Andy Lamey in Maclean’s Nov.30th

While your Mr. Lamey makes some valid points regarding the Dalai Lama, I must take issue with a few of his comments, viz comparing the Dalai Lama to Mandalea and South Africa. Mandalea was fighting apartheid within his own country, and while generally peaceful, his ANC Youth League, after the Sharpsville Massacre in 1960, was outlawed, and Mandalea was put on trial for treason; but the trial collapsed in 1961and Mandalea was set free.

Later, he joined with other leaders in an organization called Umkhoto we Zizwe, which advocated armed struggle. Put on trial for his life in Rivonia for illegal exit and for sabotage (his organization blew up some power lines), he made the famous defensive speech partly quoted by Mr. Lamey. While Mandalea was not a terrorist, neither was he a peacenik, and the comparison of him to the Dalai Lama is rather fanciful. A better comparison would be Mahatma Gandhi who did fully embrace non-violent resistance. Yet, also he was operating from within his country, and though he faced a colonial empire, it was a liberal-democratic one, tired of war and ready to compromise. Hardly today’s China.

To imply that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans should take up armed resistance towards China is just foolish. With its 2,300,000 population and less than 500,000 square miles of territory, it stands zero chance in armed conflict with a ruthless and totalitarian regime of 1.4 billion Chinese. To do anything but sending his regards and prayers for a successful Olympics would have given the Chinese leaders great ammunition against the Tibetans. Even with his good will towards their Olympics, he was accused of interference and anti-Chinese agitation. Mr. Lamey’s comment about the equivalent moral case of armed resistance of France against Nazi Germany in WWII is just as naive. France was assisted by the Allies, with the Free French army in England; hardly the situation with Tibet and China.

The comment about Dalai Lama’s epicurean tastes and selective vegetarianism is not really relevant to his cause, and is, if I may say so, a punch below his belt. Accusing him of relativist tendencies because he vacillates on same-sex union is also rather lame(y).

I don’t remember reading anything by Andy Lamey in you magazine before, but if this is the kind of rationale and logic he brings to the table, I’d rather go somewhere else.