The Dalai Lama’s man in Derry has a hero’s welcome in Dubai

Richard Moore was shot and blinded by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier in Derry in 1972 as he was walking from school. He told his story to a rapt audience of business leaders at Dubai’s Capital Club.

The Dalai Lama laughs with Richard Moore, director of Children in Crossfire, during a press conference in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in April, 2013. AFP

He is the Dalai Lama’s hero and as he tells his story to a rapt audience of business leaders at Dubai’s Capital Club it is easy to get why.

Richard Moore was shot and blinded by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier in Derry in 1972 as he was walking from school. He was 10.

“I was running up a path by an army lookout post at the bottom of the school playground,” he recalls. “Next thing I remember I was lying on the school canteen table.”

Almost 34 years later he was able to track down the soldier and forgive him. Today he and Charles Innes, the retired soldier who fired a single rubber bullet that day, are friends.

Now through a charity he established in 1996 called Children in Crossfire he helps vulnerable kids through projects aimed at giving them a better start in life.

It is a message that resonates in the Middle East where children have been displaced in conflicts from Syria to Yemen. It also struck a chord with Dubai Cares, the philanthropic organisation established in 2007 by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai. Dubai Cares has since become a major supporter of its projects.

Richard met the Dalai Lama for the first time when he visited Belfast in 2000 for a peace conference. He invited him back to his home town in 2007 to mark the 10th anniversary of his charity.

On a terrace overlooking Dubai’s financial hub he recalls that visit, as a steady stream of some of the emirate’s top business people who have just heard him speak, pass on their words of thanks before they return to their offices.

He seamlessly breaks off from the interview each time another well wisher approaches. He talks to all of them like they are old pals before returning again to pick up the story exactly where he has left off.

It is clear he’s left a big impression on them - perhaps because he says that at no point has he ever felt any anger towards Charles - even long before he ever knew his name.

He recalls how he pondered what to give the Tibetan spiritual leader as a present to mark his visit to Northern Ireland’s second largest city.

“What do you give the Dalai Lama as a gift - I’m sure he’s had everything from an elephant to a needle given to him. So I thought he might appreciate me and Charles together so I invited Charles to come to Derry.”

Richard Moore was shot during a particularly bloody period of the conflict that became known as The Troubles. He was the second child in a family of 12. Just four months earlier his uncle had been shot dead on Bloody Sunday, when 14 people were killed during a civil rights march in the city.

There was daily rioting, bombings and the smell of tear gas hung in the air of the Creggan estate where he grew up.

Before meeting Charles, he had imagined him as a young soldier, far from home who made a dreadful mistake in a dangerous environment.

It was then a surprise for Richard when he learned the the man who had shot him three decades earlier was in fact an experienced officer from a military family.

The mental image he had of him and the narrative attached to that was shattered overnight. He had to rethink everything.

“I never knew anything about the British soldier for 33 years - so like you, I was of the opinion that the guy that shot me was a squaddie, maybe 18 years of age, basically positioned in Derry on the edge of a no-go area in a pretty violent environment,” he says.

“As I grew older and engaged with that thought process it became almost a reality even though I had never met him.”

Did it change the way he felt about what happened to him that day?

After a long pause he says it did not, but acknowledges it required a mental adjustment which he describes as a “24 or 48-hour process” that he had to go through.

“When I found out Charles’s name - there was something shifted inside me,” he says. “I found myself having nerves in my stomach and questioned what I was doing. To some degree I was concerned about my family - was I re-traumatising them?”

Before that meeting in Derry, Richard says he told Charles that they would meet in private. Despite the peace process, he was aware that it would be the first time Charles had returned to the city since the height of The Troubles - daunting in itself without having to do it in public.

So he says it was with some surprise that while on stage with the Dalai Lama in front of a huge crowd, he felt a presence next to him and turned to his left asking “Charles is that you?”

“So I says to him, ‘What are you doing on stage, Charles?’ And he says ‘I don’t know’. The Dalai Lama had invited him up. He’d done something I would never have done to bring him on stage in Derry in front of a thousand people. But he saw the bigger picture and sense of reconciliation it symbolised.”

Richard Moore talks about his blindness in the casual way someone might discuss a dodgy knee.

“Blindness doesn’t play a big part in my life,” he says. “I just accept the limitations of it.”

And with that he is reaching inside the pocket of the folded jacket beside him for a business card as another well wisher approaches and the banter strikes up again.

“I didn’t get your name. And what do you do? And where are you from? County Meath? Well, I suppose we all have our problems!”

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