China Installs Its Own Panchen Lama

In a ceremony attended by senior Communist Party officials and Tibetan monks loyal to Beijing, the Chinese government Friday formally installed a 6-year-old-boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.

The enthronement of the boy the Chinese government claims to be the 11th Panchen Lama was immediately condemned as “invalid and illegal” by representatives of the Dalai Lama in India, where the religious leader maintains an administration in exile.

“This so-called enthronement of the so-called Panchen Lama goes against the wishes of the Tibetan people,” said Kalon Sonam Topgyal, an official in the Dalai Lama’s organization in Dharamsala, India. The Tibetan exile organization claimed the ceremony took place Friday morning under heavy security, which included 500 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, at the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama and the Chinese government are locked in a dispute over the right to determine the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The 10th Panchen Lama, a controversial figure who lived in China and sided with the Communists against the Dalai Lama, died in 1989.

In May, the Dalai Lama enraged Chinese authorities by unilaterally proclaiming the discovery of the true reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, whom he said was a 6-year-old boy named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima from the Lhari District of Tibet.