Dalai Lama presented the inaugural Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize

(TibetanReview.net, Oct09, 2009)  The Dalai Lama on Oct 6 received from the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the first Lantos Human Rights Prize established by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice. The Foundation furthers the work of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, distinguished Chair of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Co-Founder – with John Porter – of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and the only survivor of the Holocaust to be elected to the US Congress.

"The Dalai Lama is one of the most highly honoured peacemakers of our time," Pelosi said while presenting the award in the Capitol Visitor Centre. She also said, "US Presidents, Members of Congress, and the American people continue to be inspired by His Holiness's message of peace, non-violence, human rights, and religious understanding. And we can all learn from him.” The award included a medal on which is inscribed the words of Tom Lantos: “The rights of one are the rights of all.”

Republican Senator John McCain too was, like several others, profuse in his praise of the Dalai Lama, according to an NECN report Oct 6. He referred to the Tibetan leader’s lifelong “passionate, tireless and nonviolent defense of his people's right to self-determination and dignity” and said, "He is an inspiration to all people who possess a heartfelt sympathy for the suffering of his fellow human beings."

Also present at the award ceremony were Congressman Howard Berman, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Lantos’s widow Annette. Lantos’s daughter Mrs Katrina Lantos Swett, talked about the deep friendship between her late father and the Dalai Lama.

Just before the award presentation, the Dalai Lama met briefly with some members of Congress who had been specifically invited by Speaker Pelosi for the purpose. Later in the afternoon he met with members of China Working Group of the United States Congress. He also met with members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. 

Subscribe to the print edition of Tibetan Review, the oldest and editorially independent periodical in English on Tibet, for monthly roundups and analyses and other informative features on Tibet.