You talking about the tongue sucking controversy? I heard a pretty reasonable sounding explanation for that. "In Tibetan culture, the grandparents and elders are very close to children. It is a very common custom to kiss anybody on the mouth, especially children, for which there is a kind of understood innocence both ways,” says Angela Sumegi, an associate professor of humanities and religion at Carleton University. Sumegi’s expertise is in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Sumegi says Tibetan elders play an old cultural game with young children where they pass candy between each other’s mouths. When there are no treats left, elders will tell children they can eat their tongue. However, in the video, the Dalai Lama says the boy can “suck” his tongue. “It was a very unfortunate mistranslation of a Tibetan phrase,” says Sumegi. Seems like a cultural oddity rather than malice to me. https://broadview.org/dalai-lama-video/ Let me know if you have a different take or something else entirely.