'Shame on you, SA'

"Shame on you South Africa."

Those are the words of Irish Nobel Prize winner Betty Williams, who is boycotting the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, to be held in Cape Town next month.
Williams is one of four women laureates who have said that they are pulling out of the summit because the Dalai Lama has been denied a visa to enter South Africa for the third time. The Tibetan spiritual leader has abandoned his plans to attend the summit.
In a scathing letter to fellow laureate retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, Williams lambasts the government, accusing it of forgetting the support foreigners gave the fight for democracy.
"It is with sadness that I am unable to join you. It is a sadness so profound it almost brings me to my knees. Oh South Africa, how can you do such a thing?" wrote Williams.

"Is apartheid and the horror of those years so quickly gone from your souls that you allow the denial of a visa to one of our colleagues and greatest peace workers on Earth, His Holiness the Dalai Lama?"
Williams was a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976, together with Mairead Corrigan, for her work in bringing peace in Northern Ireland. She now works with a non-profit organisation, World Centres of Compassion for Children International, which she founded in 1997.
The summit, to be co-hosted by the City of Cape Town, has been marred by controversy since the Dalai Lama's South African office revealed that the spiritual leader would cancel his visit.
This, the office said, was because a government official had asked that the Dalai Lama withdraw his application for a visa because it would not be granted in deference to South Africa's relations with China, which regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist political leader.
"How can any amount of money earned by your government through the investments of China give you the right to forget the work of hundreds and thousands of people worldwide, who worked against apartheid, lobbying for sanctions and embargoes that crippled your economy and brought apartheid down?" Williams wrote.
"Shame on you South Africa; you throw all that hard work back in the faces of those who sacrificed for your freedom."
She accused the government of implementing tactics similar to those of its former "enslavers".
"The problem is that we usually become so good at it we surpass, and go on to perpetrate even crueller slavery. Only now, it is economic excuses, wrapped up in a blanket of supposed democracy," she said.
She said the Dalai Lama's struggle was her struggle and "no entry for my friend, for me means I do not wish to enter."
The City of Cape Town has protested at the government's refusal of a visa.