University removes Dalai Lama's image to placate Chinese students

ABERDEEN university has been criticised after a portrait of the Dalai Lama was removed from a wall in response to complaints by Chinese students.

Supporters of the Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who fled the country in 1959 for India following the Chinese occupation, said the university was bowing to pressure.

Pro-Tibet activists are up in arms, and leading campaigner David Lindsey said: "This is a surrender to the Chinese influence in the university and a betrayal of the Dalai Lama. It shouldn't be happening and we want to put him back in his rightful place."

The Dalai Lama, who turns 70 this year, was welcomed to the university when he was awarded an honorary degree in 1993, four years after he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since then, his portrait has adorned the wall of the Regent Walk building in memory of the event. But a Chinese student complained that the image was upsetting his fellow countrymen and it was taken down.

Mr Lindsey, of Tibet Support Group Grampian, met the Dalai Lama in 1993 and was angry that the spiritual leader's picture had been removed.

He said: "It's really a betrayal of the event and of His Holiness. The university was very happy to give him a degree. They treated him, quite rightly, as a world leader and a Nobel Prize winner.

"Universities are supposed to be the intellectual and moral bastion of this country. Now, they've decided to symbolically abandon one of history's most important men."

Mr Lindsey and other members of the group have written to the university principal demanding the picture be returned to the wall, with the backing of the Free Tibet Campaign in London.

Mr Lindsey also suggested that the university's decision to take down the portrait had financial motives.

He added: "The interpretation which many people will draw is that they're casting an eye over their shoulder to the fee-paying students that come from China.

"It could be surmised that the desire to appease a group who are, we would assume, contributing substantially to the finances of the university, must surely figure in the decision to remove the portrait."

At present, Aberdeen University has nearly 350 Chinese students.

A university spokeswoman admitted that the picture had been removed because of the "concern and distress" it was causing - but denied that the decision had anything to do with finance.

She said: "A picture of the Dalai Lama was put up to represent and depict one of the many different aspects of university life.

"It was brought to the attention of the university authorities that the photograph was a cause of concern and distress to a section of our student community.

"In acknowledgment of this - and in recognition of the primary purpose for the display - the decision was taken to remove it from its current location. Its removal was in no way intended to cause upset," the spokeswoman said.

The university is now considering reinstating the picture of the Dalai Lama in a less prominent position.