Other Activities
The WSS has been appealing to the general public through the media, including interviews on radio and television such as an interview on ABC Radio National in Australia on 11 June 2008 and television also in Australia to investigate what they claim are social injustices being carried out against Dorje Shugden practitioners within the Tibetan exile community and elsewhere.
The group have also set up an account on the video sharing website YouTube to promote the activities of the WSS including WSS-made video coverage. The WSS are also using political means to further their campaign. A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Human Rights report in July 2008 contained a letter from Kelsang Pema under her lay name, calling for help to gain freedom from religious discrimination and which confirmed that the WSS would be seeking help from each member of the United Nations Council, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the President of the United States, the President of France, the President of Russia and the President of the People's Republic of China. The WSS have also set up an online petition to the Dalai Lama, asking him to give religious freedom.
A decade ago, in 1997, at the height of the Dorje Shugden controversy, Robert Thurman claimed: "It would not be unfair to call Shugdens the Taliban of Tibetan Buddhism," referring to the Muslim extremists of Afghanistan. This characterization was repeated in other newspapers in 2002 when reporting about death threats against the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, northern India, which were blamed on the Dorje Shugden practitioners. In September 2008, the Western Shugden Society wrote an open letter, challenging Thurman to justify his 10-year-old claim: "You should show your evidence publicly through the internet before 25 October 2008. If your evidence does not appear by this date then we will conclude that you have lied publicly and are misleading people." As of November 2009, there has been no response by Thurman on his website.
Read more about this topic: Western Shugden Society, Activities
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