I missed this story when it first appeared a couple of weeks ago. If you did, too, it’s worth a read.
South Africa has denied a visa to the Dalai Lama to visit the country in the run up to the 2010 World Cup. South Africa had hoped that the sporting event would improve its reputation, but its treatment of the Dalai Lama — widely viewed as the result of China’s growing influence in South Africa — has blown up in its face:
A scheduled peace conference in Cape Town, called by the support committee of the 2010 World Cup and intended to show the bridge between peace and sport, has now been postponed. Two of the three South African Nobel laureates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Frederik De Klerk, canceled their own attendance at the peace conference in protest, and the third laureate, Nelson Mandela, is thought to be close to making the same decision.
There have also been massive demonstrations here in the United States about South Africa’s deference to Chinese tyranny and its betrayal of the cause of freedom in places like next-door Zimbabwe, with peace activists and human-rights organizations speaking out against . . .
Oh, wait, never mind. Wishful thinking got ahead of my reading comprehension for a moment.