Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, April 17: The remains of Tulku Hungkar Dorje, a revered Tibetan Buddhist leader and abbot of Lungngon Monastery in Gade County, Golok, who died in Chinese custody while in Vietnam, will be handed over to representatives of his monastery. However, Chinese authorities have reportedly instructed that the cremation ceremony take place in Vietnam and not in his homeland of Tibet.
Speaking to Phayul, Ju Tenkyong, Director of the Amnye Machen Institute, confirmed that Rinpoche’s body remains at a hospital in Vietnam and has not yet been released to the five monastic representatives from Lungngon Monastery. According to him, Chinese officials informed the monks that Rinpoche’s body will be handed over upon the completion of specific documentation.
Moreover, strict directives have been issued concerning the cremation. The ceremony must be held in Vietnam, with attendance limited exclusively to monks from Lungngon Monastery. Any participation by members of the public is expressly prohibited, and should such a breach occur, the monks would be held solely accountable. Additionally, they were also prohibited from taking any photos or videos during the cremation ceremony.
Ju Tenkyong further disclosed that these instructions were conveyed to the monastery’s representatives by Vietnamese authorities acting under the pressure and influence of the Chinese government. Despite these constraints, the monastic delegation is currently in the process of preparing the required paperwork to facilitate the handover of Rinpoche’s body. Plans are underway to conduct the cremation at a Sakya Buddhist center in Vietnam, though specific details regarding the timing and logistics remain confidential.
According to Ju Tenkyong, the five monastic representatives from Lungngon Monastery, who were summoned by Chinese authorities to Vietnam on April 5— were only permitted to view Rinpoche’s face on April 10.
Tulku Hungkar Dorje, the revered lama reportedly fled to Vietnam in late September 2024 after enduring prolonged interrogations by Chinese authorities. On March 25, 2025, he was apprehended from his hotel room in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in a joint operation conducted by Vietnamese police and Chinese intelligence operatives. He was transferred three days later to a local public security bureau, where he reportedly died under mysterious circumstances the same day.
2 Responses
Justice for Tulku Hungkar Dorje ⚖️
Tibetans are reduced to be slaves of communist China! They don’t even have the right to be buried in their country according to their age Buddhist customs. Not only their country has been illegally and brutally occupied but they are ethnically cleansed so the evil Chinese regime will feel not threatened of Tibet gaining its independence. Tibetans have no right to live the life they lived for centuries, no right to practice their Dharma as they have practised since the advent of Buddhism in the 7th century. They have no right to their land and can be displaced at the whim of the most blood thirsty regime. In fact the the CCP claims every inch of Tibetan land and the true custodians of the land have no right to own their land. They are driven from their land whenever there is natural resources under the ground. Monasteries are razed to the ground or submerged in the water to make way for Chinese mining companies to plunder Tibet’s rich resources or making gigantic dams for hydroelectric power to be supplied to China for the use Chinese people while the Tibetans are driven from their ancestral land and driven to arid land whereby there there is no prospect to grow crops or practice animal husbandry owing to the harsh and unforgiving climatic conditions. All the nomadic Tibetans have been uprooted from their ancestral land and shunted into ghettoes like flock of sheep and left to live a miserable life with a meagre subsistence living handout for a few years and once that is terminated they are left to rot. All the Tibetan martyrs who have sacrificed their precious life for the cause of Tibet’s independence have been forcibly taken away by the regime and never allowed a proper Buddhist burial nor their remains were ever returned to the family members. Instead, they punished the martyrs who survived the burning flames by not giving them medical treatment and food and their family members including children were imprisoned as a collective punishment. Those who dared to film the self-immolations or sent them abroad were given long term imprisonment! Even as the leaping flames consumed the bodies of the Tibetan martyrs, the evil Chinese Gestapo used batons and truncheons spiked with nails to beat the dying Tibetans. The world has never seen such barbarity as shown by the most ruthless Chinese communist regime! Today, it’s the same story with the murder of Hungka Rinpoche. The regime would not allow his remains to be taken to his own birthplace to be cremated!!! You have to wonder why? What have they got to fear if he died a natural death? The very fact his remains are not allowed to return to occupied Tibet for his followers to have a last glimpse of their beloved Guru demonstrate the cruelty, callousness and the mean spiritedness and the guilty conscience of the evil communist regime! They did the same to Liu Xiobo, the Nobel laureate. He needed urgent medical treatment since he was dying but the regime never allowed him to leave China even as he was dying! The killer regime has murdered the 10th Panchen Lama according to a book written in mandarin by Namloyak, a Tibetan writer in both Tibetan and mandarin presently living in Australia. They murdered Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche (his niece Nyima Lhamo is in exile to seek justice for her murdered uncle) and Gan Jhampa Tenzin, the Buddhist monk who raised his fist in the air in 1987 after he rushed into a burning Chinese police station to rescue fellow monks who were detained by Chinese gestapos. The Chinese murdered him in police custody. I was informed of this by Tibetan monk twins who escaped from occupied around 1996-97. They live in Switzerland today. During the height of the protests in occupied Tibet, I used to bring out my own quarterly magazine to highlight the great upheaval in occupied Tibet. I got a letter brought by western tourists from occupied Tibet. The letter read: “just like fire and feather cannot exist together, Tibetans and Chinese can’t exist together either. If we have a bomb, we would detonate it so, all (Chinese and Tibetans) will die”! This is the rage that is simmering in occupied Tibet and nothing has been done to dampen this rage and in fact the regime has only exacerbated it by its barbarism and ruthless oppression, murder and ethnic cleansing! The Dalai Lama has also warned in his latest book, “ one clear lesson we know from history is this: IF YOU KEEP PEOPLE PERMANENTLY UNHAPPY, YOU CANNOT HAVE A STSBLE SOCIETY”!!!