Hundreds of Tibetans demonstrated in Paris on Saturday in support of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, after the video on which he asks the guy to “suck his tongue” caused a real sensation in social networks, especially in the West, and the religious leader had to apologize.

Six Tibetan community associations have called for a demonstration on Saturday in Paris in support of Tibet’s spiritual and religious leader after a video was published on social media in recent days, sparking numerous hostile reactions, AFP and News .ro report.

“Stop insulting His Holiness” and “Stop Chinese propaganda,” urged a spokeswoman for the Tibetan community. Supporters of the Dalai Lama gathered in front of the France Télévisions headquarters to condemn “the media and TV channels that failed in their journalistic duty and broadcast Chinese propaganda.”

The crowd, which numbered several hundred people, including many children, waved Tibetan flags and many participants brought portraits of the Dalai Lama.

The video, broadcast more than a month after the event on February 28, shows the Dalai Lama in an audience near Dharamsala (northern India, where he lives in exile) with an Indian boy accompanied by his mother. .

In a video that has gone viral, a boy asks the 87-year-old Dalai Lama if he can kiss him. The presenter points to his cheek saying “here first” and the boy kisses his cheek and hugs him. Then, holding the boy’s hand, the Dalai Lama shows him his mouth and says, “I’m thinking here too,” and kisses the boy on the lips. The Tibetan leader then touches the boy’s forehead with his forehead and then sticks out his tongue saying, “And suck my tongue.” While some laugh, the boy, apparently a little confused, sticks his tongue out before retracting it slightly like the Dalai Lama. Then another hug ensues as the spiritual leader speaks to the boy, telling him to remember “the good people who bring peace and happiness.”

Later, after the video went viral and caused backlash, the Tibetan spiritual leader “apologized” to the boy and his family on his Twitter account, saying he “often teases people he meets innocently and playfully” and that he “regrets this incident”.

For the Tibetan community in France, all the backlash stems from a “misinterpretation of the video.” The community regrets that some French media “circulate facts taken out of context,” the statement said. “This has deeply saddened and hurt the Tibetan community in France and around the world,” the Dalai Lama’s supporters say.

“It really teases the Dalai Lama,” Françoise Robin, a university professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations, told AFP. “The Tibetans have a saying “eat my tongue”, which comes from a game between children and elders: when the former ask the latter for some money or candy, and the latter have nothing left to give, they say: “eat my tongue “, the teacher explained. “The pain this manipulation has caused to Tibetans is very difficult to measure,” the expert adds, since the Dalai Lama is “their hope and pride,” she said.