Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) – Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has slammed the “lickspittle” South African government for buckling under Chinese pressure and barring the Dalai Lama from attending Africa’s first global summit of fellow prizewinners.
Organizers confirmed that next week’s Cape Town event had been cancelled after Pretoria denied Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader a visa to enter the country for the third time in five years.
The summit was meant to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid and the legacy of former President Nelson Mandela, who shared the Nobel peace prize with the country’s last white President, FW De Klerk.
“The Nobel Summit in Cape Town, the first to be held on our continent, was meant to celebrate Madiba (Mandela). His own comrades have spit in his face, refusing to see him honoured,” Tutu said last week.
Eight years ago, the summit was scheduled to be held in Costa Rica, but was also cancelled when Beijing put pressure on that government not to grant the Dalai Lama a visa.
