The Chinese Communist Party responds to international criticism of China’s refusal to disclose the whereabouts of the real Panchen Lama, claiming that the Panchen Lama “is now a college grad with a secure job.” This is a lie that no Tibetan could believe.
The actual Panchen Lama is nowhere to be found. Even after six decades of atrocious rule and authoritarian control over Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to totally enslave Tibetans politically and spiritually have failed. Tibetans believe that the Chinese Communist Party’s secret strategy of kidnapping the Dalai Lama’s named Panchen Lama failed miserably and that the Tibetans would never be won over. The Tibetans will never consider a fake in place of a Panchen Lama. Religion, Mao Zedong once told the young Dalai Lama, was poison.
Despite this, Beijing’s handpicked Panchen Lama continues to make public appearances, pressuring and convincing dehumanized Tibetans under the barrel of the gun to welcome him and even listen to his phony teachings in a campaign to fully win over Tibet and intervene in Tibet’s religious affairs. By occupying Tibet’s territory, the CCP has stolen all that belongs to Tibetans, and in the Panchen Lama, the party has stolen Tibet’s very religion and its foundation for all time. A phony Panchen Lama could only perpetuate a lie’s legacy.
Gyaltsen Norbu, the fake Panchen Lama named by the Chinese Communist Party, said he was pleased and relieved to see Tibetan families earning a lot of money with subsidies while on a visit to a township under the jurisdiction of the Yadong county last year for a socioeconomic study, to hammer home China’s narrative that Tibetans were freed from serfdom and feudalism.
He is also said to have said, “Life is better now, and your children can go to school,” clearly contradicting the fact that Tibetans in Tibet are forced to learn Chinese and Tibetan language, which describes a thousand-year-old civilization and culture that is scraped off and denied.
Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan language rights activist who wanted to campaign for the right to learn the Tibetan language within the context of the Chinese Constitution, was arbitrarily imprisoned and sentenced to jail on charges of incitement to separatism. Tibet has always been a separate country with its own language, culture, history, and script, bound together by a common faith in the Dalai Lamas and Tibetan Buddhism. Tibet was and continues to be a testing ground for all sorts of horrors that humanity will suffer. Since 1959, Tibet has been subjected to brutal and systemic oppression, which is now being repeated in places like East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia.
China may be able to exterminate the Tibetan people, but it will never be able to break the Tibetan spirit. Tibetan children seem to be emerging from the ashes, despite sixty years of dehumanization and systemic degradation of their civilization, despite forced indoctrination, and despite the deaths of many older generations of Tibetans who lived through the occupation. This is proof that no matter what China does, the Tibetan spirit will still be deeply rooted.
Picture Courtesy: sbs.com.au
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