United Nations Association of Malaysia and Prem Rawat

I wish to bring to your attention a somewhat sensitive matter concerning your apparent endorsement of a self-professed "inspirational speaker" known as Prem Rawat.

He recently addressed the United Nations Association of Malaysia, as described in the two attached press releases. You will note that both articles clearly focus on Mr Rawat, and both clearly convey the impression that you give Mr Rawat and his "message" your own personal endorsement.

It may be simply that Mr Rawat's people are giving his speech to the UNAM rather more "spin" than they should. If so, it is for your press office to deal with. But if it really was your intention to give your own personal endorsement to Prem Rawat, I think it only fair to inform you that this man has gone under a number of aliases.

Prem Rawat was formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji, the so-called "Perfect Master" and one-time head of the Divine Light Mission, a personality cult that came to prominence in the West in the 1970s and which has been identified as a cult by academic authorities on the subject. At the time, his followers were taught that he was God incarnate. Today he is still the autonomous leader of an exclusive sect to which people are initiated with secret practices known as the "Knowledge".

For someone with his track record for taking advantage of gullible people (and growing extremely rich on their devotion), to have won the endorsement of the United Nations must be a crowning achievement. I suspect, however, that he is in fact using this "endorsement" to provide himself with a cloak of apparent legitimacy - one which is quite undeserved.

If this is indeed the case, I hope you can take every action necessary to bring such a blatant abuse of people's trust to light.

Yours sincerely

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Enc.

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