By Madeleine Bunting - The Guardian, 15 July 1996

Mandela came to Britain in trumphs. The Dalai Lama comes as an exile, dogged by protesters

With inspiration of Nelson Mandela's visit last week still fresh, another of the few world leaders with true integrity who can command widespread respect and affection arrives in London today the Dalai Lama.

The crucial difference is that President Mandela came in triumph to celebrate the victory over apartheid and was accompanied with all the panoply of a state visit The Dalai Lama, whose struggle for a free Tibet has lasted as long as that for a free South Africa, seems as far from victory as ever. There will be no visits to Buckingnam Palace for His Holiness - although a senior member of the Royal Family has apparently requested a private audience.

Tibet has been occupied by me Chinese since 1949/50, and with thousands of Chinese migrating to the Himalayan plateau every year a slow process of Sinocization threatens to overwhelm the six million Tibetans and their ancient culture.

This is the urgent but seemingly desperate situation the Dalai Lama will highlight at a press conference in the House of Commons tomorrow. Since images of the deeply revered Dalai Lama were banned in Tibet in April by the Chinese, there have been repeated clashes with Tibetans fighting to protect their Buddhist faith and way of life from the depredations of the People's Republic of China.

The Dalai Lama has to appeal for the support of western governments in the face of the growing economic power of China. As head of an exiled government in the Northern Indian town of Dharamsala with 130,000 Tibetan refugees in the Indian sub-continent, the Dalai Lama has the difficult job of keeping the Tibetan cause on the international agenda. Tibet's greatest asset is His Holiness, a man of unquestioned moral authority whose charm, humility and kindliness captivate those he meets.

The Dalai Lama has a difficult week ahead. Not only has he to win support for an old cause, but he is confronted with an entirely new challenge. Members of a British-based Buddhist sect, the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT), have set up a anti-Dalai Lama campaign and are planning to mark his visit with demonstrations. The Dalai Lama will find himself drawn into an unseemly and uncharacteristic Buddhist squabble.

The Shugden Supporters Community a campaign group made up principally of NKT members, claims the Dalai Lama banned an old Buddhist practice amongst the refugee settlements in India. Contrary to His Holiness's claims of religious freedom and tolerance, devotees of this practice are being persecuted, they main-tain. The Tibetan government-in-exile say the allegations are baseless and the campaign has yet to provide evidence. The Dalai Lama has never spoken against members of the NKT using this practice.

The Dalai Lama was invited to the UK by a coalition of 27 Buddhist organisations and much of his visit will be taken up in teachings to sellout audiences in London and Manchester packed with some of Britain's 130,000 Buddhists.

But the fear is that the Shugden Supporters Community demonstrations will over-shadow the Dalai Lama's spiritual message, as well as the more important issue of Tibet's future, and thus unwittingly play into China's hands.