Dalai Lama meets group over abuse claim

Four people who say Tibetan Buddhist teachers abused them physically or psychologically presented the Dalai Lama with written accounts from 12 alleged victims and appealed to him to address the problem.

A group using the hashtag “metooguru” gathered about 1,300 signatures on an online petition calling for a meeting with the spiritual leader so he could receive its collection of testimonies.

He met with four representatives for about 20 minutes on the first day of a four-day visit to the Netherlands.

The Dalai Lama is the leader of one school of Tibetan Buddhism. Organisers of yesterday’s meeting at a Rotterdam hotel hope the Nobel Peace Prize winner will use his moral authority to influence the faith more broadly.

“What we want from him is that he is very clear about the fact that religious leaders in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are not above the law,” Oane Bijlsma, one of the four people who met the Dalai Lama, said.