Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth and current Dalai Lama. Photo: Luca Galuzzi.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency and the China Tibet Online website accused the Dalai Lama of “Nazi” racist policies. The exiled Buddhist leader was accused of advocating policies that would result in the expulsion of ethnic Han Chinese from historically Tibetan parts of the country.

The outlets wrote that, “The remarks of the Dalai Lama remind us of the cruel Nazis during the Second World War … How similar it is to the Holocaust committed by Hitler on the Jews!”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, offered words of support for the Dalai Lama saying “The Simon Wiesenthal Center has the greatest regard for the Dalai Lama and his efforts on behalf of his people. Our Center honored him with our Humanitarian Prize in 1996, and he has always served as a role model for dissent with dignity.”

The center, based on Los Angles, also slammed the Nazi comparison saying, “It is shocking, outrageous and totally unacceptable that any Chinese official would permit the denigrating of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust as a tactic to slander a spiritual leader who has earned the world’s respect over the span of decades, precisely because he pursues his agenda through peace and dialogue. Indeed, the Dalai Lama stands for the values that the Nazis sought to destroy. We urge China Tibet Online and the Xinhua News Agency to apologize for this double slander”.