Six associations of the Tibetan community have called for demonstrations this Saturday in Paris, in support of the spiritual and religious leader of Tibet, after the broadcast of a video on social networks in recent days, which has aroused a host of hostile reactions.
“
Stop defaming his holiness!
», «
Stop the Chinese propaganda!
“, proclaimed the demonstrators, gathered in front of the premises of France Télévisions, to denounce “
media and television channels which did not do their job as journalists and relayed Chinese propaganda
”, according to the words, at the microphone, of a spokesperson for the Tibetan community.
The crowd, estimated at several hundred people - many of them children - waved Tibetan flags and many participants carried portraits of the Dalai Lama.
This video, relayed more than a month after the events (February 28), shows the Dalai Lama in audience near Dharamsala (northern India, where he lives in exile), with a young Indian boy accompanied by his mother.
The 87-year-old Dalai Lama sticks his tongue out at the obviously taken aback child, just after asking him: "
Can you suck my tongue?"
“, triggering the hilarity of the assembly.
Read alsoThe Dalai Lama apologizes for asking a young boy to “suck his tongue”
The spiritual leader later "apologized
"
to the boy and his family on his Twitter account, saying he "
often teases the people (he) meets in an innocent and playful way
" and that he "
regretted this incident
" .
.
For the Tibetan community in France, the hostile reactions are "
a misinterpretation of the video
".
She regrets that “
decontextualized facts are circulating
” in certain French media, she said in a press release.
"
This has deeply saddened and hurt the Tibetan community, in France and around the world
."
“
It is indeed a tease of the Dalai Lama
”, told AFP Françoise Robin, university professor at Inalco (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations).
"
Among the Tibetans, there is an expression, 'eat my tongue', which stems from a game between children and their elders: when the former ask the latter for a little money or a candy, and the latter have no nothing more to give, they say: 'eat my tongue'
”.
"
It is very difficult to measure the pain that this manipulation has inflicted on the Tibetans
", she adds, while the Dalai Lama is "
their hope and their pride
".