Sri Chinmoy activists condemn 'scaremongering' over Sliema statue

Activists from the Sri Chinmoy peace run have flown back to Malta to condemn critics of a monument of the late spiritual activist that was installed on the Sliema promenade last week.

“It seems as though a lovely statue which was a gift of friendship to the Maltese people has now become a political football,” the peace run’s executive director Halil Wilson told a press conference.

“It is a tragedy that this current situation is perhaps simply due to a short lived political squabble which is not really about the statue itself.”

When asked what ‘political squabble’ he was referring to, Wilson said that local controversy over the statue had originated from “a certain blog closely associated with the Nationalist Party”, referring to blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Wilson added that Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi had both endorsed the monument, and that Parliament had in 1991 named Chinmoy “Ambassador of Peace for Malta”.

Moreover, it was in Malta in 1991 that Sri Chinmoy drew the first sketch of his famous ‘peace birds’ that were exhibited across the world, including in the Louvre in Paris.

Malta was also the first country of now 152 nations to join the ‘Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossoms family’ programme.

“If unelected, private individuals are allowed to dictate public policy through scare mongering innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations, then the very fabric of democracy is at risk,” Wilson warned.

The late Sri Chinmoy was an Indian activist who promoted athleticism as a pathway to inner peace, and the monument was installed in Sliema last week by Unesco Malta at the end of this year’s Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run. Although the Sliema local council had originally given the monument the go-ahead, it has now urged the authorities to clarify allegations of sexual abuse levelled at Chinmoy by some of his female followers.

Meanwhile, an online petition calling on Parliament to pull down the statue has garnered 561 signatures at the time of writing. Wilson and fellow activist Agraha Levine flew to Malta from London specifically to address these concerns.

Wilson strongly refuted the allegations of sexual abuse as “ridiculous and unsubstantiated”, noting that no civil or criminal case had ever been brought against Chimoy, despite living in the United States “which is the most litigious society in the world, and where filing law suits is ingrained within the culture”.

“We risk finding ourselves in a perverse justice system where any person can say anything about anyone and then insist upon some kind of restitution,” he claimed.

“Sri Chinmoy hasn’t risen from the grave and become a bad person. Rather, as with Mother Teresa, there are people who try to discredit him because they disagree with his philosophy. On the Internet, they post all kinds of ridiculous trash.”

Activist Agraha Levine warned the Maltese public that “sowing fear and hatred” risks leading on a downward spiral that could culminate in Malta “becoming like a North African country”.

“It is very easy to sow hated, division and fear, but great people sow oneness, harmony and peace,” he said. “Malta should not allow intolerance to take root here.”