Contact is taking a holiday!

Shugden, also known as Dolgyal, the Buddhist group which has led a global campaign of harassment against the Dalai Lama, has announced on its website that it has disbanded and called off its demonstrations: “The Directors of the International Shugden Community previously announced that from 1 Dec 2015 they had decided to completely stop organising demonstrations against the Dalai Lama. Now, from the 10th March 2016 the International Shugden Community itself will dissolve, including its websites. May everybody be happy.”

Although they give no reason for disbanding on their website, this demise of Shugden community is credited a Reuters investigation by Paul Mooney, David Lague and Benjamin Kang Lim which revealed in December last year that the Communist Party of China backs Shugden community, using it as a key instrument in China’s campaign to discredit His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Shugden followers displayed a poster of Dorje Shugden deity during one of the protest
Photo:Reuters

Shugden community was made up largely of Westerners who demonstrated vociferously whenever the Dalai Lama appeared in the West. Maroon-robed monks handed out leaflets and spoke to people coming to see His Holiness, causing confusion and upset. Event organisers usually cordoned off an area for the Shugden crowd near the entrance to events, often allocating a separate space for the Tibetan community to sing mantras and exhibit banners of welcome for His Holiness. However, there were no Shugden protestors to greet His Holiness when he appeared in Geneva on March 11.

Speaking to Reuters in Geneva, His Holiness said: “I am aware of the decision by the ISC [the International Shugden Community] to disband…Your article was something complete, holistic sort of presentation, it was very helpful”. The Dalai Lama told Reuters he had felt it was his duty to warn followers of the dangers of worshipping the Shugden deity. He said that it is the right and the choice of an individual to practice Dorje Shugden, and that “I myself also worshipped out of ignorance. But I came to the realisation that the deity was very negative, very harmful”.

In the United States, the ISC is registered as a charity. Since 2014, its spokespeople have said they are responsible for organising the protests but denied any link with Beijing or the Chinese Communist Party.

The Reuters exposé in December said “The Dorje Shugden movement gets clandestine support from the Communist Party” and continued, quoting an internal Communist Party document issued to Chinese officials last year which said the Shugden issue is “an important front in our struggle with the Dalai clique”.

Lama Tseta, former member of the Shugden community
Photo:Reuters

The Reuters report quoted Lama Tseta, a monk and prominent former member of Shugden community, who said that China paid him and others to plan and coordinate the activities of the sect’s followers overseas. Tseta said the funding is controlled by a department of the Communist Party which directed the protests and that one of their jobs was to recruit westerners to the Shugden movement.

“The Chinese are using them as a tool to make the Dalai Lama look fake, to achieve their own ends, to undermine Tibetan Buddhism and to fragment Tibetan society” said Tseta.

In response to questions from Reuters about the Communist Party’s support for the Dorje Shugden followers, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the Dalai Lama was practicing “religious tyranny.”

The popular and widely-read Tibetan writer Woeser said in her blog [translated by High Peaks Pure Earth], “The Dalai Lama doesn’t want to see infighting between the schools lead to the fragmentation of Tibetan Buddhism, and sees the fundamentalism of the Shugden followers as religious intolerance.

“In indicating that followers of the Gelugpa school should drop their Shugden practice, he is effectively handing over greater religious freedom to believers. It is effectively a negation of something negative that yields a positive.”

Woeser continues, “The Shugden issue used to be just a religious one…but other forces had to get involved, both overtly and covertly, turning the Dalai Lama’s reforms into a tug-of-war, and making what should have been a religious matter political.”