Reportage – 2004

Tibetans urge China to release 15-year-old Panchen Lama

DHARAMSHALA, India, 23 April 2004

Exiled Tibetans criticised the Chinese governemnt of holding Panchen Lama under virtual house arrest and urged the government to release him as his 15th birth anniversary approaches on April 25.

"We are appalled at the Chinese Government"s continued detention of a 15-year-old Panchen Lama" said the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) in a statement released today.

The exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, recognised Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnation of the Xth Panchen Lama on 14 May 1995. The government of the People's Republic of China declared the recognition invalid and illegal. Three days later, the then six-year-old boy and his parents disappeared and were never seen again.

Panchen Lama is the second highest lama in the Tibetan buddhist hierarchy. It is his ninth year in Chinese custody at an undisclosed location after he and his parents disappeared in 1995.

A few months after the disappearance, the PRC government appointed its own Panchen Lama, a boy named Gyaltsen Norbu. A year later, in May 1996, the PRC admitted to holding Gedhun Choekyi Nyima "at the request of his parents" for "he was at the risk of being kidnapped by separatists and his security had been threatened".

"It is strange that the Chinese authorities would go to such lengths to provide "security" for someone they considered just an ordinary boy," the statement said. In the years following the appointment of Gyaltsen Norbu, the PRC ordered that only he was to be recognised in Tibet, while monks, nuns and ordinary Tibetans were ordered to denounce Gedhun Choekyi Nyima.

Many cases of arrests, detentions, sentencing and expulsions were reported from monasteries and nunneries in Tibet, who failed to denounce the real Panchen Lama, according to TCHRD.

Pictures of the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama are displayed prominently in the main monasteries and tourist hotels of Tibet whereas pictures of the Dalai Lama and Gedhun Choekyi Nyima are banned in most parts of Tibet, TCHRD said.

The centre called upon the PRC to allow an independent body to visit Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and verify his health and living conditions.

However, the PRC continues to deny any outside access to the child and his parents, which causes the Tibetan people to fear for the worst. Concerns raised by several western governments, including European Parliament, Polish Parliament and a British delegation, on Panchen Lama were rejected stating "Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his parents did not want their peaceful life disturbed by strangers, and that the Chinese government respects freedom of choice for its citizens".

"We appeal the United Nations and its various thematic bodies to intervene on the matter and to maintain constant pressure on the Chinese Government to secure release of the young Panchen Lama," TCHRD said.

TCHRD also urged the international community to be stronger in their condemnation of China's human rights record in general and to pressure the Chinese Government to release the young Panchen Lama and to provide him with proper access to religious studies and training.