Published by World Tibet Network News - Wednesday, November 29, 1995

BEIJING, Nov 29 (Reuter) - China named a six-year-old "soul boy" as Tibet's new Panchen Lama on Wednesday, challenging a choice already made by the exiled Dalai Lama for the second holiest figure in the Himalayan region's Buddhist hierarchy.

China's move was instantly condemned by a representative of the anti-Beijing Tibetan government-in-exile.

Gyaincain Norbu was picked as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama by drawing lots from a gold urn in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Tibetan Buddhism now has two rival Panchen Lamas - one blessed by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's god-king, and one sanctioned by China's atheist Communist government. Both are just six years old.

The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile said Beijing's choice should be rejected as a Panchen Lama "pretender."

"This clearly indicates there is no freedom of religion in Tibet," activist Kesang Takla said by telephone from London.

"What the Chinese have done is totally out of line with the religious process we believe in," she said.

The Dalai Lama had announced in May his own recognition of another boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the recipient of the spirit of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in January 1989.

Although his choice had emerged from a state-sanctioned search by senior lamas and had been expected to be approved by China, the Dalai Lama's unilateral announcement enraged Beijing.

China rejected the boy and denounced the Dalai Lama as a traitorous "splittist" who defied Buddhist tradition by failing to seek Beijing's approval and sought only to destabilise Tibet in his quest for Tibetan independence.

China maintains it has the final say over senior lamas under a 1792 agreement with the imperial Qing dynasty.

Tibetan exiles dispute this, saying the pact was set not with China, but with occupying Manchus who were toppled in 1911.

The 10th Panchen Lama said soon before his death that he and the Dalai Lama should approve each other's reincarnations.

Beijing asserted its claim of sovereignty after China's 1949 Communist takeover, sending troops to purge Buddhist "feudalism." The Dalai Lama and thousands of followers fled to India in 1959 after an abortive anti-Beijing uprising. Many Tibetans still regard China as an occupying power despite its costly recent campaigns to win popular favour.

Officials have declined to say what has happened to Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who is likely to command strong allegiance from Dalai Lama loyalists in Tibet and abroad despite a torrent of propaganda defending China's actions.

"Lhasa is placid on the outside, but its heart is not at ease," a Lhasa factory worker said by telephone. "I am reluctant to believe in the state's selection. I believe in the Dalai Lama. I support the child chosen by the Dalai Lama."

At Lhasa's Xinhua Bookstore, a Tibetan clerk said that as a Communist Party member he could respect Buddhism, though not practice it, and he supported Beijing's choice.

"This is the only legal reincarnation," he said. Western reporters, rarely allowed into the restive Himalayan region, were barred from covering the selection process.

Xinhua said the boy was identified in "strict accordance with the rituals of Tibetan Buddhism" in a lot drawing in the Johkang Temple presided over by a senior overseer of Tibetan affairs, Communist Party central committee member Luo Gan.

In what officials called a coincidence, the boy's name in transliteration matches that of the head of Tibet's nominally autonomous government, a strident critic of the Dalai Lama.

The final drive to find a Chinese-sanctioned Panchen Lama began in earnest on November 8, when 75 Tibetan lamas and officials were called to Beijing for a closed-door conclave that included an audience with Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin.

During the four-day meeting, pro-China lamas rejected pleas that the Dalai Lama's choice be retained as a candidate.