Dalai Lama supports evil cults, says Beijing

Beijing has accused exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama of supporting 'evil cults' like the Falun Gong and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo.

A lengthy commentary carried by Xinhua said the Dalai Lama 'not only has no hatred towards evil cults but instead shows a great deal of compassion for them'.

It was the third article published by the mainland's official English-language media in a week criticising the Dalai Lama for using his religious influence on a 'doomed' political agenda. The previous two were published in China Daily and the Beijing Review.

The Xinhua article blamed the Dalai Lama for supporting and helping the rise of Shoko Asahara, whose spiritual organisation Aum Shinrikyo carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 and leaving 5,000 ill.

'It is the Dalai Lama's all-out 'support' that turned Shoko Asahara, a swindler and a mountebank, into 'a religious teacher',' Xinhua said.

It said the Dalai Lama had also helped the Falun Gong - a spiritual movement and organisation branded by Beijing as a cult in 1999 - and its leader, Li Hongzhi, to 'stage various farces at the time when the 56th World Human Rights Conference was held in Geneva' in 2000.

'Even such an evil cult leader who is denounced by many and had to flee abroad to escape punishment ... secured compassion and admiration from the Dalai Lama,' it added.

The Dalai Lama fled China in 1959 after a failed uprising against Beijing's rule and has often been branded by the mainland's state-controlled media as a separatist. However, it is rare to link him to the Falun Gong.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, who won the Nobel Prize in 1989, has sent envoys to Beijing to discuss Tibet's future with central government leaders, but he expressed frustration recently that the talks had made little progress.

In recent months, the Dalai Lama has met Australian Prime Minister John Howard and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Later this month he will receive a US congressional award from US President George W. Bush.

Anne Holmes, campaign manager of the Free Tibet Campaign in London, said the media attacks on the Dalai Lama were Beijing's response to his high-profile meetings with foreign leaders.

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