Saturday, April 17, 2010

The earthquake and an open letter to Wen Jiabao




Yesterday, I posted a piece about the People's Daily's article written by Premier Wen Jiabao praising Hu Yaobang. 
It reminded me that a few years back, I wrote an Open Letter to Comrade Wen. Click here to read.
If Wen wants to be truly faithful to Hu Yaobang's memory, he should allow the Dalai Lama to visit the earthquake affected areas of Kham (today Qinghia province).
Some Tibetan living in the area have written to President Hu and Premier Wen imploring Beijing to allow the Tibetan leader's visit. Here is the letter.


Dear President Hu and Premier Wen,
Wish you both good health. During the initial hours of the natural disaster, we appreciate your government’s immediate relief efforts through soldiers and all round support from different sections of the society and we, the victims of this calamity, thank you for the same.
But we are a deeply religious community having a strong faith in the teachings of Buddha. Since many generations, we have a deep faith in His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Today, as we are suffering from a great physical and mental anguish, we really need His Holiness to visit the quake affected area to pray for the departed souls and to provide solace to the broken hearts. Today, we request you, president Hu and premier Wen, to find the compassion in your hearts and fulfill this desire of us quake victims. We, the quake victims numbering more than 10,000, implore you from our hearts to temporarily set aside your government’s political differences with the Dalai Lama and kindly consider our request.
With this invitation to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we have no other objective apart from fulfilling our religious aspirations of praying for the departed souls and the survivors of the disaster.
In this hour of distress, His Holiness’ visit to offer prayers and condolences in person is the only way to heal our wounded hearts. There is no other better way.

No comments: