China bans Lady Gaga after the pop
superstar meets with the Dalai Lama
Ben Guarino June
29 Washington Post
On Sunday, Lady Gaga made a
friend while angering a nation’s leaders.
Before the Dalai Lama was set to deliver the keynote address at the
annual United States Conference of Mayors
in Indianapolis, the 81-year-old Buddhist leader met with the
30-year-old pop star.
The Dalai
Lama fielded questions Lady Gaga had sourced from fans on social
media. The result was a nearly 20-minute-long conversation,
now posted
to Facebook and viewed more than 3 million times,
that meandered through suicide, yoga, meditation and advice on
how to face the current horrors of the world. “Whatever
happens,” the Dalai Lama said,
“hope and self-confidence are essential.”
But to
Chinese officials who view the Dalai Lama as a Tibetan separatist
— and in December tried to paint him as a supporter
of the Islamic
State — the meeting was more sinister than it
seemed.
[A
Chinese official said the Dalai Lama supports the Islamic State.
Ridiculous — and telling.]
“The
purpose of his visits and activities in other countries is just to
promote his proposal for Tibetan independence,” Hong Lei, a
spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said Monday, according to
the Associated Press.
For nearly
six decades, since a Tibetan revolution against China failed in
1959, the Dalai Lama has been in exile from his homeland. In
2009, the Dalai Lama said China had made Tibetan life “hell on
Earth,” according to
CNN; in 2011, a Communist Party chief reiterated the
famous epithet that the
Dalai Lama is a “wolf in monk’s robes.”
[China
accuses party members of support for Dalai Lama and even
terrorism]
Lady Gaga’s
friendliness toward the spiritual leader means she, too, has
incurred the Chinese government’s wrath. The State Administration
of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television now legally
forbids Lady Gaga and her music from appearing on the radio or TV.
Her downloadable albums will be removed from online
stores.
In a
translation of a report in Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, the
Guardian said that
Lady Gaga had been added to a “list of hostile foreign forces.”
This is no insignificant threat, as the musician
is arguably the most popular Western singer in
China, according to the BBC. On social media, Lady Gaga was both applauded for meeting with
the Dalai Lama and excoriated by Chinese fans who say she gave them
up.
[The
Dalai Lama thinks a female Dalai Lama would have to be ‘very, very
attractive’]
It is not
the first time China has censored Lady Gaga. She was subject to a
three-year ban that ended in 2014, though that was because her
music posed a threat to Chinese “cultural
security” rather than because of meeting with political
figures.
Nor is she
the first popular act from the West to be restricted from Middle
Kingdom airwaves for perceived Tibetan sympathies. The Wall Street
Journal reported that Chinese officials began taking a harder
look at Western musicians after the singer Bjork shouted
“Tibet! Tibet!” at a Shanghai venue in 2008. A year later, the band
Oasis was banned, perhaps because lead guitarist Noel Gallagher
performed at a Free Tibet concert in 1997. This prompted
some Chinese observers, according to the Journal, to begin
calling the bans “getting
Bjork’d.”
In the past
year, artists as diverse as Bon Jovi and Selena Gomez
have canceled
concerts in China, possibly under
pressure for supporting the Dalai Lama — or, in the case of
the band Maroon 5, attending his birthday
party.