The Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual leader, apologized Monday to a little boy for asking him to “suck his tongue” a few weeks ago during a hearing of which a video emerged on the networks social in turmoil. “His Holiness would like to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as to his many friends around the world, for any pain his words may have caused,” read a statement posted on his official Twitter account.
“His Holiness often teases the people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and in front of the cameras. He regrets this incident.”
— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) April 10, 2023
A video that went viral
In a video of the incident, which has gone viral, the 87-year-old Dalai Lama sticks his tongue out at the obviously taken aback child, just after asking him: “can you suck my tongue?”, sparking hilarity from the assembly. The video was filmed on February 28, during a Dalai Lama audience in McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala in northern India, where he has lived in exile since the failed 1951 Tibetan uprising against power. Chinese.
Internet users called his attitude “disgusting” and “absolutely unhealthy”. “What did I just see? How must this child be feeling? Disgusting,” said Twitter follower Rakhi Tripathi.
“I’m totally shocked to see the #DalaiLama appear like this. In the past, too, he had to apologize for sexist comments. But to say: ‘Now suck my tongue’ to a little boy, it’s disgusting” , wrote Sangita, also a Twitter follower.
Controversy in 2019 after sexist remarks
In 2019, the Dalai Lama apologized for saying that if a woman were to succeed him, she would have to be “attractive”. These remarks, made in an interview with the BBC, had caused controversy.
The Dalai Lama universally embodies the movement for Tibetan autonomy, but the international aura from which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 has withered and the deluge of invitations addressed to him by leaders, personalities and stars all over the planet has shrunk a lot.
This decline in interest is partly explained by the age of the monk who had to limit his travels, but also by the growing economic and political influence of China. Beijing accuses him of wanting to divide China and regularly calls him a “wolf in a monk’s robe”.