China Rights Forum, Summer 1996
Somewhere in a far-off city two six year old children are held as enforced guests in no doubt opulent prisons, while the leaders of a great nation threaten to imprison anyone who guesses incorrectly which one is the true reincarnation of an 11th century Tibetan monk. The city is Beijing, the time is now, and whatever happens the children will be the victims.
Gendun Choekyi Nyima was born in the town of Lhari in Northern Tibet in April 1989. Three months earlier the 10th Panchen Lama, the most important religious leader remaining in Tibet, had died in Shigatse, 500 km to the west. Gendun's parents, who worked in the local hospital, would have known that a great lama's consciousness seeks after death a form in which to resume his or her work as a religious teacher: the couple's oldest son had already been recognised as the reincarnation of a lama from the nearby monastery of Yarigang. It is likely that the pregnant mother prayed for such a transmigration to take place, and possible that she told visiting lamas that at birth her youngest son had birth marks on his arms which looked like rings and that his first words were "I am the Panchen."
Five years later, when the search team from the Panchen Lama's monastery of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse arrived in Lhari, they would have recalled the scars which the former Panchen bore on his arms from manacles worn during his imprisonment in the Cultural Revolution. They would have recalled also the letters seen reflected in the waters of Lhamo Lhatso, the lake by whose shores Chadrel Rinpoche, the abbot of Tashilhunpo and leader of the search party, had prayed for four days the previous October in hope of such a sign.
In January 1995, the Dalai Lama had also heard the news, reportedly sent to him by Chadrel Rinpoche in great secrecy across the Himalayas, despite the storms that year. He had in front of him a list of 28 children whose names he placed in dough balls, which with due ceremony he rolled in a basin until one fell out. Three divination procedures produced the same name. In Tibetan terms, Gendun Choekyi Nyima was now the 11th Panchen Lama.
If that part of the story was like a traditional Tibetan fairy tale, the rest is traditional Communist Party politics. In August 1993, the Chinese government had told Chadrel Rinpoche to break off all contacts with the Dalai Lama, until then officially endorsed. When on May 14, 1995, the Dalai Lama announced that Gendun Choekyi Nyima was the reincarnation, the Chinese recognised that this was Chadrel's preferred candidate and knew they had been deceived. They also recognised that their claim to Tibet rests largely on a 1792 treaty which promised them some part in the selection of great Lamas.
Troops surrounded the town of Lhari and the child was taken away with his family, probably to Beijing; they have not been heard of since. Within days 50 party officials had moved into Tashilhunpo to reeducate the monks, an estimated 5,000 troops had been transferred to Shigatse and Chadrel had disappeared. By November he had been declared "the scum of Buddhism," and is in custody; the Dalai Lama is now a "naked anti-China tool" and all leading Tibetans have to declare their separation from him, while 52 monks and lay people have been arrested for supporting his announcement of the new Panchen. The missing child was denounced in the People's Daily because he "once drowned a dog" and his parents were condemned as "notorious for scrambling after fame and profit." A second six-year-old child, Gyaincain Norbu, appointed by the Chinese state as the correct reincarnation, has now been moved to an unknown place of safety in Beijing to protect him from supposed threats of revenge. Not so much a fairy-tale after all.
Robbie Barnett works for the London-based Tibet Information Network.
