Letter from Barry Pittard to Baroness Amos
Date 10-05-02
Document date: Friday, October 4, 2002.
From: Barry Pittard
Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au
To: Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Great Britain.
Dear Baroness Amos,
Copies of my Open Letter to A.B. Vajpayee will also go to the P.M. and Deputy P.M. - and a great many others. I invite you all to read it in the light of other documentation that has been sent to you.
I request that you, Madam, do all that you can to ensure a reactivation of British Government interest in finding a means of warning U.K. boys and young men who may travel to Sathya Sai Baba's ashram at Puttaparthi.
I point out that the U.S. State Department has done as much for U.S. travellers, even despite the absence of a court conviction of Sathya Sai Baba in India, although (disapointingly) they felt constrained to leave his name out of the Travel Warning, though including telltale details.
I trust Her Majesty's Government can dare to advance an iota of the State Department effort.
It would really be a way of properly noting the nearly fifty British MP's who have signed the Petition calling for action regarding Sathya Sai Baba, details of which are found at: House of Commons website Early Day Motion 886.
A few of us have put up another type of Petition on the Internet, and it details what we feel are the most pressing key issues in the attempt to bring official investigation of the worldwide allegations levelled against Sathya Sai Baba. You can find our Petition at:
I shall be asking some leading British parliamentarians and other influential British citizens to attempt to find out whether the otherwise promising passage of this Motion was halted because of pressure from the Indian government, whose leader, A.B. Vajpayee, is highly partial to Sathya Sai Baba.
The Motion 886 and other moves to officially alert the British public to the great many and responsibly made allegations of large-scale, serial sexual molestation by Sathya Sai Baba of boys and young men from many countries, including the U.K., (not to mention many other terrible allegations) has suffered a fate difficult to explain.
Unless indeed explanation is to be sought, for example, in relation to certain transactions between the Blair and Vajpayee governments. My exeedingly well informed Indian friends assure me that Mr Vajpayee came to great Britain determined to ask Mr Blair to assist in curbing the growing parliamentary attention being given to Sathya Sai Baba. Hard on the heels of their meeting, we note that the Blair Government's interest in the Petition, and other efforts to throw light on the allegations against Sathya Sai Baba suffered sudden demise! Too sudden to allow our easy belief that all this was mere co-incidence.
The course of our efforts on behalf of the very many victims of Sathya Sai Baba may, indeed, rest in your own hands, Baroness Amos, revealing that you do indeed deeply care for justice over expediency.
Faithfully, Barry Pittard