Chadrel Rinpoche "still in prison" according to authorities

TIN News Update / 24 August 2001

The Chinese authorities have acknowledged that Chadrel Rinpoche, the senior lama who led the search for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, is still in prison although his six-year sentence expired on 17 May. No further official information was given on the current whereabouts or state of health
of the 62-year old former abbot of Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama. Unofficial sources say he has been detained outside the Tibet Autonomous Region in a high-security prison in Sichuan province due to the political sensitivity of the case. The admission
that he is still in detention was made by Gyaltsen Norbu, former governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region government, following repeated questioning by a Polish parliamentary delegation which visited Lhasa from 8 - 10 August. It is rare for Tibetan political prisoners to be detained beyond their
scheduled release date.

The Polish delegation was also promised copies of photographs that the authorities allege are of the boy recognised by the Dalai Lama as the Panchen Lama, Gendun Choekyi Nyima. The 12-year old boy and his family disappeared from their home in Lhari (Chinese: Nagchu prefecture) in the Tibet Autonomous Region in May 1995 and are being held in "protective custody", according to the Chinese authorities. Beijing continues to refuse independent access to the boy despite requests by Western governments. Ragdi, TAR deputy Party secretary and chairman of the standing committee of the regional People's Congress, told the Polish delegates that Gendun Choekyi Nyima was "far
away" from Lhasa, and so the pictures could not be obtained immediately.

According to one of the Polish delegates, Gyaltsen Norbu, now a deputy Party secretary, was "visibly annoyed" by the questioning over the whereabouts of Chadrel Rinpoche and Gendun Choekyi Nyima. He reportedly said that Chadrel Rinpoche "is still serving his term" because he "disclosed state secrets
by giving out the name of the boy who was supposed to be the Panchen Lama before it was approved by the authorities". The statement appears to confirm that one of the reasons for the Beijing authorities' anger with Chadrel Rinpoche is that they suspected he had colluded with the Dalai Lama in
announcing the decision on the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama before China was able to do so. Chadrel Rinpoche was also said to have particularly provoked the anger of hardliners within the TAR government. According to one report, he was accused by TAR officials of disregarding the authority
of the TAR by going directly to the central government in order to seek their acceptance of the identification announced by the Dalai Lama.

Chadrel Rinpoche, who was appointed by the Chinese authorities to head the search team for the Panchen Lama, disappeared in May 1995 after the Dalai Lama announced the name of the child he had identified as the Panchen Lama, Gendun Choekyi Nyima. The Chinese authorities reacted with profound
hostility to those involved in the search for the reincarnation - in November of the same year the official news agency, Xinhua, described Chadrel Rinpoche as "the scum of Buddhism". Chadrel Rinpoche was convicted for "the crime of splitting the country" and "colluding with separatist forces abroad". He was also charged with revealing state secrets, a reference to a letter he apparently sent to the Dalai Lama in December 1994 listing the names of 25 boys who were being considered as possible reincarnations.

The Chinese authorities did not admit until 1997 that Chadrel Rinpoche had been sentenced and imprisoned. Unofficial reports in 1997 indicated that he was being held at Chuandong Number Three prison in east Sichuan province, 300 km east of Chengdu. According to TIN sources, Chadrel Rinpoche
said prior to his arrest that he would not recognize China's choice of Panchen Lama, nine-year old Gyaltsen Norbu, who was enthroned by the authorities in December 1995.

According to the Polish MPs, during their visit to Lhasa Gyaltsen Norbu and other officials tried at first to give the impression that they did not understand the question about Chadrel Rinpoche. Both Gyaltsen Norbu and Ragdi reportedly presided over the investigation of Chadrel Rinpoche in July 1995, two months after the Dalai Lama announced his recognition of Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama.

Solidarity Party MP Grzegorz Piechowiak, a member of the delegation, told TIN: "The limited information we were given came after raising the same questions again and again in several different meetings with officials, who kept telling us that Gendun Choekyi Nyima was not the 'real' Panchen
Lama. We replied that we did not care, because we were asking about a human being, and we are from a country where people understand only too well the issue of disappearances. We were given only the standard responses, that the boy was healthy and with his family. So we raised all the same
questions again at a dinner attended by Ragdi on the last night of our visit. Although Ragdi said at first that they were unprepared for our request for photographs of the Panchen Lama, he finally agreed that copies of the pictures would be sent to Warsaw." In October last year, a Chinese human rights delegation showed British government officials photographs of a Tibetan boy who apparently resembles the photograph of Gendun Choekyi Nyima taken when he was six, but UK officials did not ask to keep copies of the photographs. Piechowiak told TIN that if the photographs which the Chinese authorities claim are of Gendun Choekyi Nyima are not sent to the delegation by next week they would follow up with a letter to the Chinese authorities.

The delegation, which had been invited by China on an exchange visit following a conference in Warsaw attended by Chinese officials, said at a press conference in the Polish capital yesterday that they were under constant surveillance while in Lhasa. They concluded at the press conference: "The whole process of asking questions about human rights in Tibet is like throwing stones at a brick wall. It is very difficult to call this process dialogue. We didn't have the slightest feeling that anything we said was accepted [by the authorities.]"