42) “SGI Exchanges Humanitarian Award With Castro”
Mr. Bratcher adds to this: “one month after he shoots down civilian plane on a humanitarian mission”. If you click to the story, you’ll see Mr. Bratcher reduce the time to two weeks.
The plane incident was in January; Mr. Ikeda visited Cuba in June.
This is another example of Nichiren Shoshu taking a relatively benign story, and providing its own context in an attempt to make in an anti-SGI polemic. Besides the problem with moving the plane incident until it’s almost simultaneous with President Ikeda’s visit, there is nothing in the Reuter’s story about a “humanitarian award.” The Soka Gakkai is called a “humanitarian organization,” but what Castro received was an honorary doctorate from Soka University, not an “award.”
The story itself omits many details of the visit (and concentrates on Castro’s wardrobe). Mr. Ikeda is quite aware of the nature of the Cuban dictatorship, including that Cuba is inhabited by millions of human beings. In their talks, Mr. Ikeda urged Castro to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward religious freedom; and, in fact, within a few months Castro was visiting the pope, and the pope subsequently visited Cuba. At those meetings also, arrangements were made for future student exchanges. Mr. Ikeda, like (perhaps) the pope, understands that the way to international openness and dialogue is not to shun those of different philosophies, but to engage them in areas of common interest.
Craig Bratcher’s integrity in this matter can be easily judged from his June 1998 post to ARBN:
Hi Buddy!!
I have pictures from the Snakeyo times showing Castro with his cammies dropped and Ikeda on his knees!
More rebuttal of SG-eye: