Published by World Tibet Network News - Thursday, December 07, 1995

By CHARLES HUTZLER- Associated Press Writer

BEIJING, Dec. 7, 1995 (AP) -- China is forcing religious figures in Tibet to attend a ceremony Friday enthroning the Chinese nominee for the Himalayan region's second-highest spiritual leader, the exiled Tibetan government said.

China, determined to suppress the movement for an independent Tibet, nominated the 6-year-old boy last month as a rival to the child named in May by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's supreme spiritual leader.

The enthronement of the Beijing-backed Panchen Lama will be held at his traditional seat, Tashi Lhunpo monastery in the central Tibetan city of Shigatse, according to a statement from the exiled government the Dalai Lama leads in Dharamsala, India.

If the ceremony goes off without protest, China will boost the credibility of the Panchen Lama it chose, said Robert Barnett of the Tibet Information Network, a London-based monitoring agency.

"What they face here is a testing of popular opinions and the people of Shigatse," Barnett said.

The Panchen Lama was the most powerful religious leader to stay in Tibet after China brutally crushed an independence movement there and the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959. The Panchen Lama died six years ago, and in May, the Dalai Lama announced that he had found him reincarnated in a 6-year-old boy.

China called the announcement another attempt to promote Tibetan independence and on Nov. 29, Beijing officials presided over the selection of a rival 6-year-old.

Authorities have ordered all Tibetan religious figures to arrive at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery today in time for the enthronement Friday, the statement said. "They have been told they could not feign ill health in not attending the so-called coronation," it said.

"They are closing the doors on even marginal forms of disagreement," Barnett said.

The Tibetan government-in-exile said details of the enthronement have been "issued in dribs and drabs" and that the monastery's management committee, replaced by Beijing this summer, has no control over the ceremony.

Beijing increased the number of soldiers stationed in and around Shigatse in June and July and the military presence remains high, Barnett said. Beijing has also removed monks sympathetic to the Dalai Lama and his candidate.