Dharamshala
A group of international experts on Tibet and China had a common observation that the Chinese government’s act of arresting the six-year-old Panchen Lama of Tibet and keeping information about him as a well-guarded state secret for past 27 years has exposed the failure of their policies and seven-decade long colonial rule over Tibet.
It is therefore not surprising that China’s failure in making Tibetans accept their fake Panchen Lama has emerged as the embodiment of the failure of the Chinese Communist Party policies and its rule over Tibet.
These experts from Britain, Germany, India and Tibet were participating in an international webinar. It was organized by Centre for Himalayan Asia Studies and Engagement (CHASE) and Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) to mark the 33rd birth anniversary of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was identified as the 11th reincarnation of Panchen Lama in Tibet in 1995.
The six-year-old boy was arrested by the Chinese government because the search team of the Tibetan monks had taken the approval of the exiled Dalai Lama for this child as the real incarnation.
The Chinese rulers of Tibet enthroned another five-year-old boy Gianchin (Tib: Gyaltsen) Norbu as the ‘real’ incarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. Since then Beijing has refused to divulge any information about the safety or whereabouts of Gedhun despite repeated requests from many world governments, the European Union and leading human rights groups from across the world.
Kai Mueller, an international jurist and Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet in Berlin, said that although China has been trying hard to establish the legitimacy of its rule over Tibet by making high claims like ‘liberation’ and ‘development’ of Tibet, yet the Chinese leadership looks so miserable that they don’t have the courage to even share right information about a child who is living under their captivity for past 27 years.
