FaithWorld

Obama meets Dalai Lama at White House, China sees U.S. interference

China accused the United States on Sunday of “grossly” interfering in its internal affairs and seriously damaging relations after President Barack Obama met exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House. Obama met the Nobel Prize laureate for 45 minutes, praising him for embracing non-violence while reiterating that the United States did not support independence for Tibet.

China, which accuses the Dalai Lama of being a separatist who supports the use of violence to set up an independent Tibet, reacted swiftly, saying Obama’s meeting had had a “baneful” impact, and summoning a senior U.S. diplomat in Beijing.

“This action is a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and damages Sino-U.S. relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement released in the early hours of Sunday. “The Dalai Lama has for a long time used the banner of religion to engage in anti-China splittist activities,” he added.

Obama stressed the “importance he attaches to building a U.S.-China cooperative partnership,” the White House said. “The president reiterated his strong support for the preservation of the unique religious, cultural and linguistic traditions of Tibet and the Tibetan people throughout the world,” spokesman Jay Carney said after the meeting. “He underscored the importance of the protection of human rights of Tibetans in China. The president commended the Dalai Lama’s commitment to nonviolence and dialogue with China.”

Read the full story by Ben Blanchard and Jeff Mason here. See also the following previous Reuters stories:

Obama, Dalai Lama meeting damages relations -China

Obama presses for human rights in Dalai Lama visit

South Korea’s religious harmony put to the test by Christian president

Many South Koreans concerned about the country’s increasing religious polarisation are haunted by a single image – their president on his knees. While attending a national prayer breakfast in March, President ??Lee Myung-bak knelt to pray at the urging of Christian leaders.

Footage of the event shocked many in this pluralist country, where about half the population professes no particular faith and the remainder is split between Buddhists, Christians and homegrown creeds. The main Buddhist Jogye Order called the scene “unforgiveable,” and even right-leaning media outlets generally supportive of the conservative leader expressed reservations.

The Joongang Ilbo daily in an editorial urged Lee, a devout Protestant and an elder at Seoul’s Somang Church, to keep his beliefs private and avoid provoking public ire. “(The prayer breakfast) convinced people how dangerous the current situation really is,” said Park Gwang-seo, head of the Korea Institute for Religious Freedom, a civic group that works to promote the separation of religion and state. “We’re at a peak as far as the relationship between politics and religion is concerned.”

South Korea’s constitution stipulates that there is no official religion and bars the country’s leaders from elevating one faith above others, but analysts say Lee’s outspoken religious beliefs and strong links with the Christian community have opened the administration to charges of bias.

“We have for the first time very high-level conflicts going on, particularly between the Christian community and the Buddhist community,” said Hahm Sung Deuk, a professor of political economy at Korea University. “And most of these conflicts can be attributed to President Lee.”

Read the full story by Jonathan Hopfner here.

.

Japanese Buddhist priest discusses spiritual toll of nuclear crisis

In Japan, where nature is believed to cleanse spirits, how do people cope when treasured mountains and oceans are tainted by leaks of radiation from a nuclear power plant?

Sokyu Genyu, a Buddhist priest from a temple just 45 km (28 miles) west of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeast Japan, is drawing attention to the less visible scars from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. As a member of a government panel to come up with a blueprint for rebuilding after the deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11, Genyu is adding the people’s voice — and a different view — to debate on dealing with the loss of homes, jobs and communities.

“We need to treat the situation in areas affected by radiation separately,” said Genyu, head priest of the Fukujuji Temple and also an award-winning author, told Reuters. “It’s not just about getting compensation.”

His small town of Miharu has welcomed thousands of residents who have evacuated from around the nuclear plant, still leaking radiation after being struck by the tsunami.

Damage to the environment has been especially hard on local communities, where farmers and fishermen have traditionally associated nature with god, building shrines to pray for rich harvests and to ward off accidents at sea, Genyu said. “God is the symbol of nature, what people worship as a natural force that can be violent and is uncontrollable,” he said.

“Mountains and oceans have purified us but now those mountains and oceans are contaminated,” he said. “We could see the very foundation for our religious beliefs break down, because it is no longer able to purify us.”

Read the full story by Chisa Fujioka here.

China rejects U.N. claim on Tibetan monks’ disapperance

China on Thursday defended its treatment of Tibetan monks it says are undergoing re-education, responding to a U.N. inquiry about what exiled Tibetans have called the forced disappearance of hundreds of monks.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the monks had not been detained illegally, and urged U.N. human rights investigators to act without prejudice. “It is legal to supervise religious affairs, and protect normal religious order. This issue of forced disappearance fundamentally does not exist,” Hong told reporters at a regular press briefing.

U.N. human rights investigators called on China to reveal the “fate and whereabouts” of more than 300 monks who disappeared after being rounded up by security forces at a monastery in Aba prefecture of the southwestern province of Sichuan in April.

Exiled Tibetans and a prominent writer have said that the crackdown was sparked by a monk’s self-immolation in March, an apparent protest against government controls.

Read the full story by Michael Martina here. For more background, see Chinese forces detain 300 Tibetan Buddhist monks for a month – sources

.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Chinese forces detain 300 Tibetan Buddhist monks for a month – sources

Security forces have detained about 300 Tibetan monks from a monastery in southwestern China for a month amid a crackdown sparked by a monk’s self-immolation, two exiled Tibetans and a prominent writer said, citing sources there. Tension in Aba prefecture, a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province, have risen to their highest levels since protests turned violent in March 2008, ahead of the Beijing Olympics, and were put down by police and paramilitary units.

The monks from Aba’s Kirti monastery, home to about 2,500 monks, were taken into custody on April 21 on military trucks, according to two exiled monks and a writer, who said their information was based on separate accounts from witnesses who live in Aba.

Kirti Rinpoche, the head of the Kirti monastery, told Reuters by telephone that it was the first time that Chinese security forces had seized such a large number of monks at a time, and that he had no information on their whereabouts.

“The situation is getting more and more repressive,” said Kirti Rinpoche, who is based in India’s Dharamsala, the seat of the exiled Tibetan government, and receives his information through a network of contacts inside Aba. “The restrictions imposed on the monastery and the monks are getting more intensified. It’s literally a suffocating situation where monks are not allowed to do anything at all.”

His account could not be independently verified as the government restricts visits by foreign reporters to restive Tibetan regions. Repeated calls to the Aba county government and public security bureau went unanswered. The Foreign Ministry said last month everything was “normal” at Kirti.

Read the full story by Sui-Lee Wee here.

China says everything normal at restive Tibetan temple

China has said everything was “normal” at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery after the Dalai Lama urged restraint in a stand-off between security forces and Tibetans at the temple in southwest China. “According to what we understand, over the past few days the life and Buddhist activities of the monks at the Kirti monastery are all normal. Social order there is also normal. Material supplies in the temple are totally sufficient,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing.

“The Kirti temple’s administration and local police a long time ago set up a police-temple joint patrol team. The aim was to prevent people of uncertain identity from entering the temple. Relations between the police and the temple have always been harmonious,” Hong added on Tuesday without elaborating.

Hundreds of ethnic Tibetans had gathered at the Kirti monastery in Aba in Sichuan province last week trying to stop authorities moving out monks for government-mandated “re-education,” according to exiled Tibetans and activists. That prompted police to lock down the monastery with as many as 2,500 monks inside.

A 21-year-old Tibetan monk burned himself to death on March 16 in Aba, an overwhelmingly ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province that erupted in defiance against Chinese Communist Party control three years ago. Instead of putting out the flames, Chinese police beat the young monk, creating huge resentment in the monastery, the Dalai Lama said in his statement last week.

Read the full story here. For more on the unrest among Buddhist monks in Tibet, see:

Dalai Lama urges restraint in Tibet monastery standoff – April 16

Chinese police clash with civilians at Tibetan monastery – April 14

A Buddhist burial in the rain for Japanese tsunami victims

Ten flimsy wooden coffins were laid on two sturdy rails at a hastily prepared cemetery of mostly mud as Keseunnuma began burying its dead from the tsunami that ripped apart the Japanese coastal city. Desperate municipalities such as Kesennuma have been digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the deceased are almost always cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.

The number of dead in Kesennuma was 551 as of Saturday, far too many for local crematoriums that can typically manage about 10 bodies a day but are now facing shortages of kerosene. Another 1,448 in the city of about 74,000 are missing from the tsunami two weeks ago that has left more than 27,500 people dead or missing across Japan.

“This disaster has created a tsunami of tears,” said Shuko Kakayama, master of the Jifukuji Buddhist temple, which lost 300 members to the tsunami that also heavily damaged temple grounds.

Kakayama, who presided over the funeral of one temple member and prayed for all souls laid to rest, said there was a time when Japan permitted burials. But the government has for decades sought cremations due to a lack of cemetery space in the densely populated country.

“If we are returning to the earth, then we are returning to nature,” Kakayama said.

Read the full story by Jon Herskovitz here.

.

Tibetan monk burns to death in China protest, support group says

A Tibetan Buddhist monk burnt himself to death in western China Wednesday, triggering a street protest against government controls on the restive region, a group campaigning for Tibetan self-rule said. The self-immolation appeared to be a small repeat of protests that gripped Tibetan areas of China in March 2008, when Buddhist monks and other Tibetan people loyal to the exiled Dalai Lama, their traditional religious leader, confronted police and troops.

The 21-year-old, named Phuntsog, was a monk in Aba, a mainly ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province that erupted in defiance against Chinese control three years ago. The monk “immolated himself today in protest against the crackdown,” said Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet, a London-based organisation.

“He shouted some slogans about freedom when he did it,” said Zorgyi, a researcher for the organisation, who is based in northern India, where many exiled Tibetans live. “We’ve also received widespread information about a protest with nearly one thousand monks and lay people that came after,” Zorgyi said.

Read the full story by Chris Buckley here.

.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

China says Dalai Lama must reincarnate, can’t pick successor

Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, does not have a right to choose his successor any way he wants and must follow the historical and religious tradition of reincarnation, a Chinese official said on Monday.

It is unclear how the 76-year-old Dalai Lama, who lives in India and is revered by many Tibetans, plans to pick his successor. He has said that the succession process could break with tradition — either by being hand-picked by him or through democratic elections. But Padma Choling, the Chinese-appointed governor of Tibet, said that the Dalai Lama had no right to abolish the institution of reincarnation, underscoring China’s hardline stance on one of the most sensitive issues for the restless and remote region.

“I don’t think this is appropriate. It’s impossible, that’s what I think,” he said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China’s parliament, when asked about the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that his successor may not be his reincarnation.  “We must respect the historical institutions and religious rituals of Tibetan Buddhism,” said Padma Choling, a Tibetan and a former soldier in the People’s Liberation Army.  “I am afraid it is not up to anyone whether to abolish the reincarnation institution or not.”

The Chinese government says it has to approve all reincarnations of living Buddhas, or senior religious figures in Tibetan Buddhism. It also says China has to sign off on the choosing of the next Dalai Lama. Some worry that once the Dalai Lama dies, China will simply appoint its own successor, raising the possibility of there being two Dalai Lamas — one recognised by China and the other chosen by exiles or with the blessing of the current Dalai Lama.

Read the full story by Sui-Lee Wee and Ben Blanchard here.

.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A non-prophet organization? A reader objects to “Prophet Mohammad”

Tom Heneghan

Jan 20, 2011 22:51 UTC

A reader recently objected to our use of the phrase “the Prophet Mohammad” in news stories, saying that he as a Christian did not consider Mohammad a prophet and many other non-Muslims presumably didn’t either, therefore we should not write about him as if everyone agreed he was one. The reader wrote:

I’ve just noticed recently that Reuters is following in the footsteps of AP and AFP in designating the Islamic prophet Mohammad as “The Prophet Mohammad”. I as a Christian don’t consider him my prophet, and neither do, I’m sure, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. Why then have all the mainstream news outlets decided to treat us all as if we are Muslims? Rightly, he should be described as “the Islamic prophet Muhammad” rather than “The Prophet Muhammad”.

Nikolas

Robert Basler answered on his reader feedback blog Good, Bad and Ugly. Normally, we simply crosspost religion-related items from other Reuters blogs (such as Front Row Washington or Pakistan: Now or Never?), but I’m not sure all readers know that Good, Bad and Ugly (GBU) is the blog where we answer readers’ criticisms. So now that that’s clear, here’s what the GBU editor posted in “A non-prophet organisation?”:

Reuters uses a wide variety of official and traditional titles and honorifics without endorsing them.

In the political sphere, if a head of state or government uses the title “president,” we use it as well, regardless of whether he or she is elected or appointed or a dictator, or what the journalist might personally think about it. We also refer to kings as kings, even if there are republicans in the country in question who challenge the monarch’s right to be head of state.

In the religious sphere, we use official titles and honorifics that are common in the faith concerned and widely understood across religious boundaries. We refer to Jesus Christ, even though non-Christians would dispute his honorific “the Annointed One.” The same goes for Buddha, a title (”the Enlightened One”) for Siddhartha Gautama that non-Buddhists could also contest.