China warns Glastonbury organizers after Dalai Lama's invite.
July 2, 2015 As usual, attendees at the Glastonbury festival this year enjoyed an incredible lineup of artistes from various generations. However, one guest who many might have been very surprised to see would have been the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan spiritual leader made an early morning appearance in front of a large crowd at the Festival on Sunday, the 28th of June.
The Dalai Lama showed up to The Peace Garden, close by the Festival’s Stone Circle area, holding a T-shirt for this year’s event. He showed how good a sport he was by throwing the shirt over his head and walking about with it on him.
He also had a few words for the assembled guests “So, so my friend asked me to come to this great festival – a festival of people, not necessarily a festival of government or politicians. This is I think, truly, a festival of people,”
The Dalai Lama also shared some thoughts on education saying “We must look at education field as I mentioned earlier from kindergarten level up to university level some education about warm-heartedness. A sense of care. Then, generations who come to that kind of education could be a more warm-hearted generation.”
All the warm and fuzzies aside, the trip was not entirely without dispute, as China had earlier warned organizers of the Glastonbury festival about their decision to invite the Dalai Lama to the event. Their reason was that inviting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader to visit one of Europe‘s largest music festivals was parallel to giving him a platform to engage in activities against China. Beijing had denounced the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist who wants an independent Tibet, but the leader denies this, saying he only wants genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.
The Dalai Lama then fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. There were peace talks between some Nobel peace laureates and China about the situation but that seems to have halted in the face of changing governments and a crackdown on Tibet.