Anti-Dalai Lama group disbands after Chinese role is exposed

The Buddhist group leading a global campaign of harassment against the Dalai Lama has called off its demonstrations and disbanded, according to a statement on its website.

The announcement comes after a Reuters investigation revealed in December that China's ruling Communist Party backs the Buddhist religious sect behind the protests that have confronted the Dalai Lama in almost every country he visits.

Reuters found that the sect had become a key instrument in China's campaign to discredit the Tibetan spiritual leader.

The directors of the International Shugden Community (ISC) had decided to "completely stop organising demonstrations against the Dalai Lama," said the statement on the website of the Buddhist group. From March 10, the ISC and its websites would dissolve, the statement added, without giving any explanation.

The undated message was in the name of Len Foley, an ISC spokesman. The telephone number for Foley listed on the group's earlier publicity material is now disconnected.

Nicholas Pitts, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for the ISC, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Dalai Lama said he was aware of the decision by the ISC to disband. "I don't know," he said, when asked what was behind the group's announcement.

More than five decades after he fled into exile in India following a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama still exerts considerable religious authority over many of the six million ethnic Tibetans living within China's borders. This infuriates Beijing, which routinely denounces him as a separatist, accusing him of trying to split Tibet from China.

In the US, the ISC is registered as a charity in California. Since 2014, its spokespeople have said they are responsible for organising the protests but denied any link with Beijing or the Chinese Communist Party.

The protesters are members of a sect that worships Dorje Shugden, a deity in Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama discourages this worship, warning his followers that the deity is a harmful spirit.

Dorje Shugden devotees accuse the 80-year-old Nobel Laureate of persecuting them and dividing Tibetan Buddhism. "I myself also worshipped that," the Dalai Lama said, referring to the deity. "Out of ignorance." But he came to the realisation that the deity was "very negative, very harmful," he said.

This had been an obscure, internal religious dispute, but it has been exported to the West. The protests have followed the Dalai Lama on his regular speaking tours to cities in North America, Europe and Australia.