By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, April 27: The President of the Central Tibetan Administration, known also as the Tibetan government-in-exile, met with US Special Coordinator of Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya on Monday as part of his first official visit to Washington DC. “Honored to meet with the CTA Sikyong Penpa Tsering today. I reaffirmed U.S. commitment to preserving Tibet’s religious, cultural, and linguistic heritage; advancing human rights for Tibetans in the PRC; and supporting the international Tibetan diaspora,” tweeted Under Secretary Zeya after their meeting.
President Penpa Tsering’s visit on April 25 coincided with the 33rd birth anniversary of the missing 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. He was accompanied by Representative Namgyal Choedup from the Office of Tibet and abbot of Tashi Lhunpo monastery Zeekyab Rinpoche for their meetings to sensitise the plight of the missing religious figure with US officials and diplomats.
As per the Tibet.net report, the meeting focused on the “effective execution of the enrolment bill ‘HR 1646’, which demands the US Ambassador to China to meet with the long missing Panchen Lama of Tibet and confer religious rights awards to the latter to attain recognition.” The Tibetan delegation also called on the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain to celebrate and commemorate the missing Panchen Lama’s birthday.
Moreover, the US State Department spokesperson Ned Price also issued a statement enquiring the whereabouts of the missing lama, and demanded China to make accessible the details of his well-being. “Today marks the 33rd birthday of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama, who remains missing since PRC authorities abducted him as a six-year-old child on May 17, 1995. The PRC continues to deny members of the Tibetan community access to the Dalai Lama-designated Panchen Lama, the second most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and instead continues to promote a state-selected proxy,” the press release said. It also promised to support the rights of Tibetans to religious freedom and their right to “select, educate, and venerate” their own leaders without any interference.
Right after Gedhun Choekyi’s disappearance in 1995, the CCP government appointed its own candidate Gyaltsen Norbu as the state conducted their own religious ceremony. He remains wildly unpopular among Tibetans, both inside and outside Tibet. The candidate chosen by the Dalai Lama has not been seen since the abduction, but in a press statement given in 2020, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that he had “received free compulsory education when he was a child, passed the college entrance examination and now has a job.” No further detail about his whereabouts and well-being has since been divulged.
3 Responses
The actual statement by PT was, ‘Tibet being free but NOW a part of China, we need to explore the best solution to the problem under Umeylam.’ The poster above cut out those bits to quote a standalone phrase out of context to skew the whole message. How very convenient for his agenda. Tibet is now under China, that’s a fact, but that’s different from making a political assertion like when LS said ‘we Tibetans we never had a country’ a statement that negates our whole nationhood.
PT did not merely state a simple fact about our present circumstance but also asserted Tibetan freedom prior to being subjugated. That’s the exact stand of Umeylam – that we concede to being a part of China on the condition that it gives us adequate autonomy and accepts that we were a free nation prior to that. HH has publicly said words to the exact same effect, so how has PT contravened HH’s stance?
The poster above is trying to paint this anti-HH slant in PT’s words to attack PT covertly because he knows that opposing PT head on will expose his bare-faced animosity. To think that he thinks a gargantuan nation like India with the sharpest policy and political brains were fooled into making a compromise with Chinese and didn’t do so after considering all historical consequences and power projections. Uncle Sam has from the very beginning, some records point far as back as 1949, has refused to recognise Tibet despite their incessant lip service. There’s clearly something that these governments knew about the capacity of China and the appropriateness of appeasement, perhaps much better than a random internet blowhard with a pompous political moniker who has too much time on his hand and keeps writing essays full of fury and fire signifying nothing. I wouldn’t spare a second on the poster above with his deluded bombastic rants, he can just keep raging in his echo chamber, but replied to you astonished by how you’re taken in by his bilge without exercising your own judgment.
When I was growing up in India as a teenager, the most hurtful statement was the Indian Government’s oft repeated mantra “Tibet is part of China”. For every occasion: disagreements, border incursions, Indian leader’s visit to China or vice versa, India kept reciting this mantra! It was like a knife to the heart! But being refugees and dependent on the charity of India, we had no way of expressing our hurt feelings and the distasteful frequency India recited this empty mantra. PM Nehru, Krishna Menon and Appa Pant had bought the Chinese communist rhetoric of being “eternal friends”. The Chinese had the audacity to fabricate a propaganda saying, “India and China never went to war for two thousand years”! This was to erase the fact that Tibet was a buffer State and India and China never shared a land border!
After some seventy odd years of India’s fawning subservience to China, the Galwan clash put paid to the nature of Chinese deceit and at long last, India woke up to the reality. Even the 1962 humiliation by communist China was not enough the douse India’s enthusiasm to grovel to the Chinese communists. After twenty Indian Jawans were killed by the PLA thugs, India woke up from its self-imposed slumber and belatedly acknowledged the contribution of Special Frontier Force Jawan, Nyima Tenzin’s and a BJP high command attended the funeral of the deceased SFF jawan. He was killed when a mine blew up under him as they went to capture strategic Galwan heights.
The Tibetan Government in exile has been equally enthusiastic in appeasing the CCP since the Chinese invasion of Tibet and has been hoping against hope that the Chinese will come to an amicable solution to the illegal occupation of Tibet.
Samdhong Rinpoche has been on record saying “the Tibet issue is an internal issue of China” to appease China. He also said, “China has a legitimacy problem in Tibet and that exile Government was ready to help in the legitimisation” process!!!
Now his protege, Sikyong Penpa Tsering is continuing with his legacy of appeasement by stating: “at the moment Tibet is part of China” during his first official visit to Washington!!! This was a deliberate attempt to entice the CCP to come to the table for talks! The CCP’s demand that the Dalai Lama accept Tibet as part of China and the Dalai Lama’s refusal to do so has been the biggest stumbling block in the Tibet-China dialogue of the deaf. The Dalai Lama has steadfastly rejected Chinese demand and did not pull any punches in declaring that Tibet has been an independent country during its more than two thousand years of history. In the “Five Point Peace Plan” he presented at the US Congress on September 21st 1987, he declared, “the Chinese authorities have attempted to confuse the issue by claiming that Tibet has always been part of China. THIS IS UNTRUE”.
When the Chinese premier Li Peng visited India in 1991, the Chinese insisted the inclusion of “Tibet is part of China” in the communique which India and China signed. A Times of India reporter Sabina Sehgal interviewed the Dalai Lama on December 13th 1991 and asked for his opinion on the inclusion of the afore mentioned Chinese demand. The Dalai Lama answered, “TIBET IS NOT PART OF CHINA”.
Despite such clear and unambiguous statement by HH The Dalai Lama, the Sikyong ignored the Dalai Lama’s consistent stand and disgraced himself by making a fool of himself!
Doesn’t he know that Crimea is occupied by Russia yet nobody accepts Crimea as part of Russia. It’s still recognised as part of Ukraine. Taiwan and South Korea were colonised by Imperial Japan. Taiwan was ruled by Japan for 50 years from 1895-1945. Korea was ruled by Japan for 35 years until the surrender of Japan in August 1945 but both nations never became part of Japan. So, either the Sikyong is completely ignorant of history or he is incompetent and is prone to embarrassing gaffes. If he is deliberately selling Tibet to communist China in order to make a name for himself at the cost of Tibetan national interest, THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE and THIS MUST BE RECTIFIED!
China respects power and appeasement will only discredit ourselves and destroy the Tibetan Movement. Just as India has failed in its appeasement policy towards China, Tibetan appeasers will face the same fate. It will only bring humiliation and ignominy to the Tibetan national cause!
The piece shared was an eye-opening for everyone – if there is any takers! We need many such opinions for and against the subject to be shared discussed on larger public platform. The political leadership should convey the message on international platform about what the concurring sentiments of the stakeholder coupled with what our spiritual leader believes, not out of his own whims and fancies, over all he is there appointed by masses to represent them.