The New York Times

Friday, July 9, 1999

Beijing Seems to Lose Battle Over Who Is the Real Lama

By SETH FAISON

LUOFU, China -- In a carpet shop in this dusty town in Sichuan province, east of Tibet, two photographs are prominently displayed on the main wall.

One is of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, who is worshiped by Tibetans as both a god and a king. The other is of a 10-year-old boy who was selected in 1995 by a committee of Tibetan elders as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-most important religious figure.

The boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, disappeared later that year into the custody of Chinese authorities, prompting accusations from exiled Tibetan activists that he had become the youngest political prisoner in the world.

The boy's detention immediately became the crux of a bizarre political struggle that highlights the vigorous battle for religious and political legitimacy by six million Tibetans who live in territory ruled by China, both in Tibet proper and in the area around Luofu and in other parts of the Tibetan plateau that spill into adjoining provinces.

Late last month, Chinese authorities escorted another young boy, ordained by Beijing as the official choice to be Panchen Lama, to the traditional seat of power for that post in Shigatse, Tibet. Official versions asserted that the rightful ruler was taking his rightful place.

Yet this second boy, Gyaincain Norbu, who is just 9 years old, was escorted by a team of armed guards, including sharpshooters who were positioned on rooftops, apparently out of fear that the boy is in danger of assassination, despite official claims that he is universally loved by the people.

Here in a Tibetan-populated area of western Sichuan Province and in many adjoining areas, ordinary Tibetans and monks overwhelmingly seem to prefer the first boy.

"We all love him," said the proprietor of the carpet shop, a 57-year-old woman with long braids and thick glasses. "No one listens to Beijing."

In countless other stores, homes and Buddhist temples, the photograph of the first boy is in evidence, while the second boy's picture is virtually invisible.

The fight is rooted in the delicate question of how to replace the previous Panchen Lama, who died unexpectedly at the age of 50 in 1989.

At the time, worried that exiled Tibetans might try to secretly name their own Panchen Lama, Beijing authorized a search group to find a reincarnation whom they could control as a pro-China figurehead. They entrusted the abbot of Tashilumpo Monastery, the traditional seat of power for the Panchen Lama's sect of Tibetan Buddhism, to oversee the process.

A boy was duly found, in the same mystical fashion used to select previous Dalai and Panchen Lamas, with Tibetan elders traveling to a holy lake, waiting for revelatory hints about where to hunt, and following a path of arcane clues.

Hoping to unify Tibetan exiles behind the Beijing-approved choice, the abbot quietly asked the Dalai Lama for his approval, which he gave in the spring of 1995.

Yet before the choice had been finally approved and announced in Beijing, representatives of the Dalai Lama surprised Chinese leaders by announcing that a new Panchen Lama had been discovered.

Beijing was so angered that it denounced the choice, put the boy and his parents under detention, arrested the abbot, and announced that a new boy would be selected -- by an old method: drawing ivory lots from a golden urn. A new Panchen Lama was proclaimed in November 1995.