Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, Oct. 2: The President of the exile Tibetan government known officially as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), Penpa Tsering, currently on an official visit to Ottawa from September 25 to October 7, has urged the Canadian government to take a clear position on the issue of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation in opposition to China’s claim of sole authority over the matter.
“We need the support of as many free and democratic nations as possible to assert what true religious freedom entails—and in the Tibetan context, that means the freedom to determine our own reincarnation,” he said.
Acknowledging the hesitancy of some governments to challenge Beijing due to economic interests, Penpa Tsering remarked, “When it comes to China, that’s always the problem—governments, unfortunately, tend to chicken out.”
He added, however, that an increasing number of countries in recent years have recognized China’s authoritarian nature, citing Beijing’s repression in Tibet and East Turkestan (Xinjiang), its crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, and its threats against Taiwan. “We are hopeful that governments today understand China far better than they did in the past,” he stated.
The United States has long maintained a firm stance on the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. In 2020, it passed legislation amending the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, affirming that decisions regarding the Dalai Lama’s succession belong solely to Tibetan Buddhists, free from interference by the Chinese government. This law enshrines as official U.S. policy that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is a purely religious matter to be determined by the Tibetan Buddhist community.
The European Union, which had remained silent on the issue for years, took a significant step on July 6 this year—His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday—by issuing a joint statement through the human rights ambassadors of seven European nations. The ambassadors of France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Lithuania, Estonia, and Iceland stressed that religious freedom includes the right to choose one’s own leaders without state intervention, thereby affirming the Tibetan Buddhist community’s right to identify its own successor.
Building on these international positions, the CTA President has now called on Canada to take a similar stand. During his visit, the Tibetan political leader further appealed to the Canadian government to denounce the Chinese state-run residential boarding schools in Tibet, which he said bear troubling parallels to Canada’s own history of forcibly assimilating Indigenous children.
He emphasized that these institutions amount to a systematic effort at cultural erasure. “Children are instructed solely in Mandarin, indoctrinated with Chinese Communist Party ideology, and in many cases subjected to military-style drills,” President Tsering noted.
“The result is that children are separated from their families, culture, and religion,” he said. “The Chinese government’s objective is clear: to assimilate the younger generation of Tibetans into becoming Chinese, thereby extinguishing Tibetan identity altogether.”
