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Dalai Lama mourns the death of Polish president

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Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a file photo taken on 25 March 2008. A plane carrying President Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country’s military and political elite crashed in a dense fog into a grove of trees in the western Russian city of Smolensk killing all 96 people on board on 10 April 2010.File photo/AFP/Getty Images/Attila Kisbenedek/Hungary

The Dalai Lama offered his condolences to the people of Poland for the death of President Lech Kaczynski and other officials in a tragic air crash in Russia last week.

In a letter sent to the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on 10 April, the Dalai Lama recalled having met the President when he visited Poland, and expressed his admiration for Kaczynski’s dedication to the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights.

A plane carrying President Kaczynski crashed in a dense fog into a grove of trees on Saturday in the western Russian city of Smolensk. There were no survivors among the 96 people on board, according to agencies.

Besides the president and his wife Maria Kaczynska, the accident claimed the lives of many of the president’s entourage, his personal chaplain, as well as the top brass of the military, the deputy foreign minister, a former president, the head of the Olympic committee, historians, and conservationists.

The delegation had been due to attend a ceremony commemorating a 1940 Soviet massacre of thousands of Poles captured in World War II in the nearby Katyn forest.

Kaczynski will be laid to rest on Saturday.

The Dalai Lama had visited Poland four times since 1993. His last visit to the country was in July 2009, when the Polish capital Warsaw made the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen.

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