Cape Town - The Global Youth Peace Indaba has opened in Cape Town, with International Children’s Peace Prize winner Chaeli Mycroft saying the Dalai Lama could have sent a stronger message if he had not withdrawn his visa application and the government had rejected it.
The Tibetan spiritual leader was to have attended the 14th World Peace Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, which was to have opened here on Monday. It was decided to hold the summit in another country after several laureates withdrew in protest at South Africa when it emerged that the Dalai Lama had been told he would not be granted a visa.
Organised over just a week, the indaba is the revamped Youth Summit that was to have taken place in parallel with the peace summit.
It includes speakers from the FW de Klerk Foundation, the Chaeli Campaign, the Albert Schweitzer Institute, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, the University of Tel Aviv and UCT. It continues on Tuesday and on Wednesday at the Southern Sun Hotel.
During question time in a panel discussion, Mycroft - an advocate for childhood education and inclusion and co-founder of the Chaeli Campaign, a co-host of the event - said from the floor that she was not happy about the Dalai Lama not being able to come here.
But the Dalai Lama also had a responsibility in the situation in that he had withdrawn his application, although he had done so for a reason.
“There is a perception among people that boycotts are going to make immediate change, but I think there needs to be a recognition that these things take time,” Mycroft said.
Panellist Dave Steward, the executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, said that boycotts worked sometimes.
He questioned the laureates’ decision to withdraw from the summit in a gesture of respect for the Dalai Lama.
“Is it efficient?” Steward said of the laureates’ action.
There could have been more of an impact if they had come here to initiate in a dialogue.
“It’s a good example of the unintended consequences of boycotts.”
Steward said that in not attending, the laureates were not punishing the government that didn’t allow the Dalai Lama access, but the people of Cape Town and South Africa’s Nobel Peace laureates.
“The ANC government didn’t want the summit to be held in Cape Town. We wanted the summit so that we could share with (the laureates) our special experience with peace-making,” Steward added.
Fellow panellist Cassandra Veney, a professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, spoke about the power of boycotts, saying she wondered what would have happened if people had not boycotted shops that would not serve African-Americans in the US.
“How do you dismantle an institution? Without non-violent tactics such as boycotts, I shudder to think what sort of situation we would be in today.”
Cape Times