Published by: World Tibet Network News, Saturday, Jun 1, 1996

From: TIN News Update / 1 June, 1996 / total no of pages: 3

- China Admits Holding Panchen Lama Child "for Protection" -

China has admitted for the first time that it is holding the missing Tibetan child, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, regarded by most Tibetans as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The UN has asked that a delegation be allowed to visit the seven-year old boy, whom Beijing says is being held to prevent him from being kidnapped by Tibetan nationalists.

The announcement coinicided with TV footage showing the child approved by Beijing as the Panchen Lama accepting gifts in Shigatse from Party leaders and follows unusually strong press statements calling on cadres to try to diminish Tibetan religious belief, described as full of "deceitfulness, backwardness and poisoning".

"He has been put under the protection of the government at the request of his parents," China's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Wu Jianmin, told the UN experts on Tuesday who had asked China to allow a UN representative to meet the child recognised by the Dalai Lama. Ambassador Wu did not say where the child is being held.

"The Chinese ambassador said the boy, who has not been seen in public for more than a year, was in good condition and was living with his parents," the official Chinese news agency reported in its account of the meeting in Geneva. "The boy was at risk of being kidnapped by Tibetan separatists and his security had been threatened," it said.

The admission comes just over one year after the child and his family disappeared, and follows 12 months of denials by Beijing. Chinese officials "have no idea of the whereabouts of the soul boy designated by the Dalai Lama", China's Foreign Ministry spokesman told journalists last November.

The disappearance of the child and his family has led to widespread international activity, including requests from the UN and a resolution last December at the European Parliament which halted implementation of a European development project in Tibet.

Gendun Choekyi Nyima is believed to have been escorted to Beijing by Chinese security forces from his home in Northern Tibet within days of the Dalai Lama's announcement on 14th May last year that he had recognised the child as the 11th Panchen Lama, one of Tibet's most senior religious leaders. The announcement led to a six month dispute with Beijing, who in December installed a different child as the official Panchen Lama.

Tuesday's announcement was made in response to a formal question put by the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, which spent two days this week assessing whether China has complied with its legal obligations under the Convention for the Rights of the Child, which it ratified in 1991.

Thomas Hammarberg, vice-chairman of the committee, described Mr Wu's statement on the Panchen Lama dispute as "not very positive when it comes to finding a peaceful solution to this conflict", and the Committee's rapporteur, Mrs Santos Pais, supported a request that China allow a UN representative to "visit the family and provide reassurance". There has been no public response to the request so far, and it was not referred to in the Xinhua report.

Much of the committee's discussions focussed on the question of deaths in Chinese orphanages and the 10 members, who are all independent lawyers and experts, expressed concern about the high death rates in the institutions. They made formal recommendations that China implement new training methods in orphanages, a system of independent inspections of child welfare institutions, and a better method for collecting statistics about children.

They also pressed China to provide information about the disproportionately low number of girls in China, and advised Beijing to make further efforts to end discrimination against girls and to review its family planning policies "to find ways to avoid any possible effect they could have in causing discrimination against girls".

Wu assured the Committee, which consists of ten independent lawyers and experts, that good treatment is given to children in welfare institutions and said that a major factor in the reported discrepancy between the sexes of children born in China was due to the number of newborn girls who were not registered, according to Xinhua. "On many issues including the rights of child, China has fallen victim of biased propaganda of some Western media and non-governmental organizations," Wu said, adding that China welcomes experts visiting his country "to establish objective and impartial dialogues".

The committee will present its final recommendations on China's implementation of the Convention on 7th June.

- Strengthening Patriotism and Weakening Belief -

On the same day that China admitted holding the missing child, Beijing revealed that the official Panchen Lama child has been returned to Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse, Tibet's second city and the scene of protests last July over the Panchen Lama succession which led to the arrest of over 30 monks and others.

Previous official reports as recently as March had said that the official Panchen Lama child was living in Beijing, giving rise to speculation that he was not fully accepted by monks at Tashilhunpo.

"I feel very happy today, I thank the president from the bottom of my heard", the official child said, according to a Xinhua report from Shigatse which gave a detailed description of the unveiling of a "golden board" presented to the monastery by Jiang Zemin, China's President.

The 3 metre long board was inscribed with the words "Safeguard the Country and Benefit the People" in Jiang's handwriting and will be hung over the entrance to the main temple in Tashilhunpo. Tibetans "sang and danced hand in hand in the courtyard" to expressed "their heartfelt gratitude for the care for Tibetan Buddhism from the central government and the Communist Party", said Xinhua of the unveiling ceremony, which was broadcast as a major item on China's national TV news.

The ceremony, conducted by the Tibet Party Secretary, who is not allowed religious belief, seems to have been an entirely secular affair, and appears to have been aimed to show the state's authority over religion. Raidi, a deputy secretary in the Tibet Communist Party, told the gathering that the inscription "requires religious believers to sincerely support the leadership of the Communist Party and to safeguard the state sovereignty of China" and called on Tibetan Buddhists to fight against the pro-independence movement.

The publicity given to the event also appears to have been designed to show that the official Panchen Lama child is now safely accepted by the monks of Tashilhunpo, but some commentators said the absence of senior Chinese officials from the "historic" unveiling ceremony, and the reference to attacking separatism, would have given viewers the impression that officials were nervous about visiting in the area.

The inscription is part of an effort, initiated last year, to contain dissent by reminding people that religious belief is only permitted to patriots. Last week the next stage of the campaign was mapped out in an important article which called for efforts to diminish religious belief and to continue class struggle.

"It is necessary to educate the masses and prompt them to accept a correct world outlook, a correct outlook on life and correct values. The influence of religion on the people's minds should be weakened," said the article, published in Tibet Daily on 13th May, in an explanation of how cadres must "positively guide religious activities to come into line with socialist society."

The article, attributed to Ni Banggui, possibly a pseudonym for a Party office, contained the most aggressive criticism of religion in recent years. Some cadres "do not realize the deceitfulness, backwardness, ignorance and poisoning of religion", said the article, which added that as a result "the size and influence of monasteries and monks have grown out of control."

The article listed four other factors which constrain the development of socialism in Tibet and which "do not exist in other parts of our country", including rural illiteracy, the Buddhist reluctance to kill agricultural pests, and the fact that "people do not take a bath or rarely wash their faces throughout their lifetime and even defecate and urinate without going to a toilet." [end]