Published by: World Tibet Network News, Tuesday, Jun 18, 1996

Beijing uses Panchen Lama, police against Tibetans

By Matt Forney in Bejing

Far Eastern Economic Review

20 June 1996

The struggle against the Dalal Lama clique is a long-term, bitter, complex, you-die-I-live political battle with no possibility of compromise." So stated China's official voice on Tibet, the Tibet Daily, on May 25.

The threat's meaning extends far beyond the current Tibet crackdown, with its confiscation of private photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama, police shootings, and lengthy prison sentences for "splittists." It encapsulates Beijing's long-term strategy of forcing the leaders of Buddhist Tibet into the party's camp not just in this lifetime, but in their future life-times as well: Beijing wants to control the religious elders who will name the next reincarnation of the Dalal Lama after the current, 61-year-old god-king leaves his temporal body behind. This Beijing hopes to accomplish by influencing the young Panchen Lama, who traditionally oversees the Dalai Lama's selection.

"From the earliest period of Buddhism in Tibet, the Chinese have been trying to control the clergy," says Tsering Shakya, a London-based historian whose book, History of Modern Tibet Since 1947, is about to be published. But so far China has failed because "it never created a group of Tibetans who favour Chinese Communist rule because of material or ideological incentives So it's no surprise that Beijing tries to nurture a patriotic Panchen Lama," Shakya says.

Never mind nurture-Beijing now ad-mits it holds a boy whom the Dalai Lama identified as the proper reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, now presumed to be seven years old, vanished almost immediately after the Dalai Lama announced in May last year that a series of divinations had confirmed the boy's identity as Tibetan Buddhism's second holiest religious figure. An irate Beijing nullified his edict, detained the leader of the boy's selection committee, and asked Tibet's leading lamas to choose another, which they did.

Foreign Ministry officials insisted the first boy was "with his parents" and bridled at accusations that they held the world's youngest religious prisoner. But China's ambassador to Geneva, Wu Jianmin, confirmed to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in early June that the boy lives in government custody at an undisclosed location in Beijing. The child lama's family, Wu explained, had sought government protection from Tibetan separatists bent on kidnapping him.

After Beijing pressured for another boy, Tibet's most senior lamas fingered Gyaincain Norbu, the son of Communist Party members from the same county as the Dalai Lama's selection. His subsequent appearances have been carefully orchestrated affairs. A Lunar New Year blessing at Beijing's Huangsi Temple, for instance, was closed to ordinary Tibetans, and any who might have sneaked a peek had to slip past the 500 uniformed police guarding the grounds.

The second boy's most important role, as far as Beijing is concerned, is not offering blessings and sacraments.

It is the selection of the Dalai Lama. "It's not a hard and fast rule, but an accepted practice," that the boy recognizes the Dalai Lama, says Robert Barnett of the Tibet information Network in London.

The calculation is that if Beijing can control the Panchen Lama, it might one day control the Dalai Lama. But that won't be easy. First, Tibetans will watch that the Beijingselected boy's education proceeds according to tradition. So far that seems to be the case. His religious teacher, Bomi Rimpoche, "is not considered a stooge by any means," says an observer familiar with the education process. He's highly regarded as a Buddhist academic.

Furthermore, ordinary Tibetans have yet to show reverence for what many see as the central government's monk. The previous Panchen Lama, for instance, used to appear for Lunar New Year celebrations at the Minorities Culture Palace, where he offered blessings to Tibetans in Beijing. "This year, most of us stayed away" for fear of tacitly recognizing the boy's authority, says a Tibetan intellectual in Beijing. The boy did not attend.

Beijing must also worry that the Party loyalty of any prominent Tibetan is far from assured. Take the case of the previous Panchen Lama who, in 1951, China's newly victorious Communist leaders forced the Dalai Lama to accept. By the time he died in 1989, he had decried the employment of the People's Libation Army in Lhasa that year.

Some Tibetans say the Chinese poisoned that Panchen Lama.

Beijing has never been able to install an ethnic Tibetan as party secretary of Tibet, either. Unlike the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region to the north, where local elites are often elevated to positions of leadership in the province, "Beijing has totally failed" to work Tibetans into the party's top echelons, says historian Shakya.

Instead, Beijing has relied on escalating repression. Monks at the Ganden monastery near Lhasa reacted to a ban on photographs of the Dalai Lama by attacking police and Chinese officials on May 6. News reports say police shot and wounded three monks and detained up to 100 more, and up to 600 fled the area. Rioting spread to two nearby monasteries before police restored order. Days later, a court sentenced six previously detained Tibetans to up to five years in prison for advocating independence, and issued a June 30 ultimatum for activists to turn themselves in. The Tibet Daily ran a series of articles excoriating the Dalai Lama.

At the end of May, officials at the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, unveiled a plaque in the calligraphy of Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin. It reads: "Safeguard the Country and Benefit the People," and hangs alongside the sanctuary's Buddhist idols.