Tibet Information Newtork - 21 September, 1995

A Chinese attack on the Dalai Lama this week has indicated a split amongst China's own supporters, providing a rare glimpse of dissent amongst high level Tibetans over Chinese policy in the Himalayan region.

The signs of disagreeement have emerged as China stepped up its four month campaign against the Dalai Lama for recognising a Tibetan child in May this year as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the most senior leader in Tibet after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. The issue is of crucial importance for Beijing because its claim to rule Tibet rests largely on the argument that the Chinese government appointed senior Lamas to their posts.

This week the Chinese issued two lengthy statements in Beijing Review, an official English language weekly, citing historical evidence to prove that only Beijing has the right to appoint reincarnated Lamas.

The Chinese argument depends on abstruse details, including the claim that its envoy sat on more cushions than other diplomats at the enthronement of the previous Dalai Lama, and the fact that the Chinese representative faced south while the British envoy faced west. An editorial comment declared that such evidence had already "touched a sore spot of the Dalai Lama".

At the core of the debate is Beijing's claim that in February 1940 the Chinese Government, then in the hands of the Nationalists, presided over the selection and enthronement of the present Dalai Lama. But this claim was publicly discounted six years ago by Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, the most senior Tibetan leader within China, who is now conspicuously silent on the matter.

Ngapo, who signed the 1951 surrender document on behalf of Tibet and later became head of the Tibet Government and Deputy Commander of the Tibet Military Region, gave a speech in 1989 in which he refuted the Chinese claim at length. "As a historical account this is totally inaccurate, and it is anyway impossible that an event of this kind could have occurred. At that time there was a relationship with the Guomindang [the Chinese Nationalists] but the claim that the Guomindang was requested to come to [preside over] the enthronement is untrue," says Ngapo, a view which he later published in a Chinese newspaper.

Beijing's second statement this week rests on the claim that the Tibetans in 1940 had to ask for permission from the Chinese Government to dispense with an arcane lottery process known as "Shaking the Golden Urn", which China now insists must be used to select the new Panchen Lama.

Ngapo says that in 1985 he was given permission to consult the Chinese state archives in Nanjing, and that documents there confirmed his views. "We were there and there was no question of using the golden urn - we all know that. There is no question of the Guomindang representative being sent for to attend the enthronement or that he gave permission to install the 14th Dalai Lama without using the golden urn," Ngapo told top-ranking Tibetan officials and scholars at a conference at the China Tibetology Centre in Beijing in 1989, according to a tape recording of the speech.

At one point during the speech other Tibetan leaders can be heard agreeing with Ngapo. "I told the Chinese I could never change my words no matter what way they find to say it. The decision is to be made by them, the ones who have the authority. There is no way that I can change," said Ngapo, who remains the only Tibetan besides the Panchen Lama to have had the status of a national leader in China.

The Chinese case, reiterated last week, relies partly on a 1940 report submitted by the Regent of Tibet to the Chinese about the selection process, but in his 1989 speech Ngapo described the report as a "scruffy note" written for distribution at a meeting of Tibetan officials.

One of last week's statements from Beijing included a pointed reference to Ngapo, quoting a 1991 press conference at which he endorsed Beijing's insistence that the selection of the senior lamas should be done by the Golden Urn lottery system.

Since May, however, although the Chinese press has quoted statements by almost all Tibetan leaders from the Tibet Autonomous Region in support of its campaign against the Dalai Lama's choice of a reincarnation, Ngapo has not been cited on the issue, except for his remark made four years ago. He is rumoured to have argued that the issue is a religious matter in which he has nothing to contribute.

There are reports, so far unconfirmed, that at an internal policy conference last year the Chinese leadership instructed officials to curtail Ngapo's influence among Tibetans, although there have not yet been evident signs of this. Ngapo resigned in April 1993 from his post as a vice-Chairman of China's parliament, but this could have been purely for age reasons. One of Ngapo's sons was removed from his position as head of tourism in Lhasa in 1993, and another defected to the US in 1985, where he works as policy analyst for a pro-Tibet organisation.

The former Tibetan aristocrat may have become more critical of Chinese policy now that Beijing appears to be encouraging the further flow of Chinese cadres and migrants into Tibet and the replacement of Tibetan cadres by Chinese, a policy which Ngapo had helped persuade former party Chairman Hu Yao Bang to reverse in 1980. Many Tibetans who make no demands for Tibet's political distinctiveness from China consider that China is bound by its commitment to respect the cultural distinctiveness of Tibetan culture and identity, a commitment that was won from Beijing in the early 1980s by the Panchen Lama, with backing from Ngapo.

- Leaders Silent -

Several other influential Tibetan leaders have also remained silent on the question of who has right to identify the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The religious base of the Panchen Lamas stretched way beyond the borders of central Tibet, the area ruled directly by Lhasa which is now called the Tibet Autonomous Region. It was particularly strong in Amdo, the former north-eastern area of Tibet, where some leaders have an influential role in the dispute but have not yet given public support to the Chinese claim.

Neither has any statement been published from Chadrel Rimpoche, who, as head of the Panchen Lama's monastery in Shigatse, was the leader of the Beijing-approved search party for the Panchen Lama's reincarnation. He is believed to be still in detention, probably under some form of house arrest, in Chengdu or Beijing, as a result of Chinese suspicions that he communicated with the exile Dalai Lama concerning the reincarnation issue.

A senior Party official told journalists in Beijing on 21 August that Chadrel Rimpoche, was "in hospital" and that he had been "ill" since May. The official, a deputy director of the United Front, the arm of the Party charged with controlling non-Party groupings including Tibetan leaders, asked not to be named. "I can't say where he is but he is in good shape and his health conditions are getting better", he told Beijing journalists after repeated questioning. He was unable to say what illness Chadrel Rimpoche was supposed to have been suffering from and declined to say where the hospital was.

The announcement is the first admission by the Chinese authorities that the lama is under some form of restriction. Last month Chen Jian, a Foreign Ministry Spokesman, denied that the abbot was detained "or anything like that". Western diplomats have been told by officials that the abbot "has completed his education", a phrase which could be taken to mean that his interrogation has been completed. The officials insisted that Chadrel Rimpoche would be continuing his work in the official Search Committee for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

Both United Front and Foreign Ministry officials refused to give information oncerning the whereabouts of the child identified by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation, and denied that the boy had left Tibet or that he was under house arrest. The child has been missing since May. Informed sources say the boy is in Beijing, and a western diplomat said last month that he had been told by officials that the child was "under protection".

None of the Tibetans leaders has direct power within the Chinese system, but they carry great influence with Tibetans and their silence is in effect a repudiation for Beijing, which always claims unanimous support for its policies.