Published by World Tibet Network News - Sunday, December 03, 1995

By Moira MacDonald

TORONTO, Dec. 3, Toronto Sun -- Canada should send a representative to China to make sure a young Tibetan boy chosen as a top spiritual leader is safe, a protest demanded yesterday.

The Chinese government's denial that it knows the boy's whereabouts is "quite incredible and difficult to believe," Rigzin Dolkar, of the Canada-Tibet Committee told the protest of about 60 outside the Chinese consulate.

"He is an important figure in their eyes... In a totalitarian state I cannot believe that the Chinese government does not know" where he is, Dolkar said.

Last May Gendun Choekyi Nyima was pronounced as the reincarnation of Panchen Lama -- an important Tibetan spiritual figure -- by the Dalai Lama, revered by Tibetan Buddhists as Tibet's spiritual and unofficial cultural leader.

But six-year-old Gendun and his family disappeared from their northern Tibetan village in July and have not been heard from since.

Tibetan activist groups believe they are being secretly held in Beijing by Chinese authorities who oppose the Dalai Lama's popularity.

On Wednesday, Chinese officials named a different six-year-old boy - Gyaincain Norbu - as the new Panchen Lama, challenging the authority of the exiled Dalai Lama.

Protester Tsering Rabgey, 50, remembered how her father half-dragged her with a rope around her waist as her family fled Tibet over the Himilayan mountains in 1959.

Tibetans will "never accept" the Chinese selection of Panchen Lama because "it's their choice," said Rabgey, wearing the traditional colorful dress.

"We want the real Panchen Lama right away," she said. "We want to know where (the Chinese) put him."