Dear Editor,

I refer to the Dalai Lama’s meeting with US President Barack Obama and

I commend him for his desire to talk with world leaders in the hope of gaining their condemnation of China’s communist government and its efforts to suppress religious autonomy.

China’s Marxist government is characterised by the “class struggle” which implies that society is founded on violence. Within this perspective, any reference to ethical requirements calling for courageous and radical institutional and structural reforms makes no sense. In this system, every affirmation of faith or of theology is subordinated to a political criterion, which in turn depends on the class struggle, the driving force of history.

Participation in the class struggle is presented as a requirement of charity itself. The desire to love everyone here and now, despite his class, and to go out to meet him with the non-violent means of dialogue and persuasion, is denounced as counterproductive. In truth, atheism and the denial of the human person, his liberty and rights, are at the core of Marxist belief.

The Tibetan cause is a reminder that religious freedom is a fundamental right that precedes the state. So far as we can learn about the history of mankind, through excavations right back into prehistory, we can see that there has always been an idea of God. The Marxists had predicted the end of religion. With the end of oppression we would no longer need the medicine of God, we were told. But even they had to recognise that religion never comes to an end, because it is present in man as such.

Paul Kokoski

Canada

pkokoski@mountaincable.net