Richard Gere pays tribute to His Holiness at 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival

DHARAMSALA, Jul 4: Hollywood star Richard Gere paid tribute to the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama and lauded Czech Republic’s former president Vaclav Havel for having met the Tibetan leader when many other political leaders refrained from doing so for fear of upsetting China.

Gere met the statement on July 3 at the opening ceremony of the 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Central and Eastern Europe’s leading film event, where the actor was honored with the festival’s highest award, the Crystal Globe for outstanding contribution to world cinema, according to a report by Variety, a weekly American entertainment magazine, on its website variety.com on July 3.

The Hollywood star, who is a follower of the Tibetan Buddhist leader and ardent supporter of Tibetan cause, mentioned that as well as being Karlovy Vary’s 50th anniversary, this year also marked the 80th birthday of the Tibetan spiritual leader which falls on Jul 6 according to the Gregorian calendar.

He also lauded the former Czech President Vaclav Havel and the people of Czech Republic for their extraordinary gesture of having invited His Holiness to their country.

“One of the extraordinary things is — in a world that is almost totally controlled by the Chinese communist government right now — Vaclav Havel invited his Holiness to come here, be photographed with him, spend time with him, loved him, embraced him, and he was one of the very few people, and it was certainly one of the very few countries, that did that,” Gere said and added,

“So I’m going to thank him, but I want to thank all of you for honoring and having such an extraordinary president, who continually did things like that. And hopefully the Czech Republic, the great Czech Republic, will continue to do these extraordinary, wonderful things.”