Hundreds of Tibetans demonstrate in Paris in support of the Dalai Lama after a controversial video

Several hundred Tibetans gathered on Saturday, April 22, in Paris in support of the Dalai Lama, after the broadcast in recent days of a video on social networks which created controversy. Footage shows Tibet’s spiritual and religious leader in audience near Dharamsala, northern India, sticking his tongue out at a clearly taken aback young boy, just after asking him: “Can you suck my tongue?”triggering the hilarity of the assembly.

The Dalai Lama then presented “his excuses” to the boy and his family on his Twitter account, explaining that he “often teases people that[il] meet in an innocent and playful way” and that he “regretted this incident”. “Stop defaming His Holiness!”, “Stop the Chinese propaganda!”proclaimed Saturday the demonstrators, gathered in front of the premises of France Télévisions at the call of six associations of the Tibetan community.

For the Tibetan community in France, the hostile reactions are “a misinterpretation of the video”. She regrets that “decontextualized facts are circulating” in some French media, she said in a statement. “It is indeed a tease of the Dalai Lama”deciphers with 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'”, she explains.