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Article: Please don't compare the Dalai Lama to Haile Selassie.(Commentary)(Editorials)(Letters)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- April 27, 1997
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In an otherwise precise commentary, "Greed, cowardice and human rights" (April 21), Patrick Buchanan compares the Dalai Lama to former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie III. He calls the latter "a symbol of moral resistance to mocking tyranny," referring to Selassie's defeat of Italian fascism in Ethiopia.
Without going into detail on the disparities between a pacifist Tibetan monk and a ruthless absolute monarch, an important irony must be noted. It was Selassie who, in 1961, disbanded the United Nations-declared semiautonomous government of Eritrea; followed suit by illegally annexing that nation; made it illegal for the Eritrean national language, Tigrinya, ...