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On May 17th, 1995 the
Chinese government abducted Gendun Choekyi Nyima who was then six
years old and had just been recognized by the Dali Lama as the 11th
Panchen Lama – which is the second most prominent holy man in
Tibetan Buddhism. He turns 16 today. Amy speaks with Robert Thurman
of Columbia University.
By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez,
Democracy Now!
The World's Youngest Political Prisoner
Turns 16
Today is the 16th birthday of a boy considered
to be the youngest political prisoner in the world. On May 17th,
1995 the Chinese government abducted Gendun Choekyi Nyima who was
then six years old and had just been recognized by the Dali Lama as
the 11th Panchen Lama – which is the second most prominent holy man
in Tibetan Buddhism. And despite repeated requests, no international
observer has ever been allowed access to the boy.
Today a
group of cyclists will be completing a five day ride that began in
Washington D.C. They will be delivering a letter to U.N Secretary
General Kofi Anan asking him to pressure the Chinese government to
release Gendun Choekyi Nyima.
Robert Thurman, Chair of
Religious Studies at Columbia University, where he is the Jey Tsong
Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies.
RUSH
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: On the phone with us to
talk more about the situation in Tibet is scholar and author Dr.
Robert Thurman, Professor at Columbia University. Welcome to
Democracy Now!, Professor Thurman.
ROBERT THURMAN:
Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be with you.
AMY
GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. We’re also joined by
Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. Can you talk about who this boy
is?
ROBERT THURMAN: The Panchen Lama is the
reincarnation in the Tibetan belief of the second highest Lama in
their sort of Lama government that they had, and a very beloved
figure. He was—his previous life had stayed in Tibet under the
communists, was imprisoned for 15 years for not collaborating with
them, and then, only in the ’80s after Mao was gone and the Gang of
Four was gone, when there was a brief opening in Tibet under Hu
Yaobang, he sort of came back out and he did cooperate with the
communist government in order to rebuild things in Tibet, during
this brief moment, about five-year period, before they cracked down
again. And there was a moment where they were letting the Tibetans
do what they wanted. So, he was very, very beloved, and he prevented
also the draining of the central lake, what they called the Soul
Lake of Tibet, in the middle of the country, which they have drained
for electric power. Nowadays they’re draining. And as long as he
lived, he prevented them from doing that. And then he died very
suddenly in 1989. And this young boy was his
reincarnation.
It was a very sad thing because they asked the
Dalai Lama at first to help discover the reincarnation, because it
was during a more liberal period. Then, but once he had announced
who it was, according to the traditional way of finding him, they
suddenly turned around on that policy and they arrested this boy
with his family and have kept him completely out of communication.
Nobody has ever seen him since then. He has been under—imprisoned
since he was six years old, and he—nobody knows where he is. And
then they appointed—the communists, to the height of cynicism—the
communists, who don’t believe in reincarnation in any way, they
appointed a reincarnation, and they have their own puppet on there.
But the Tibetans don’t believe him at all, and it’s a big distress
for all of the Tibetans.
AMY GOODMAN: Where do you
think he is right now?
ROBERT THURMAN: There’s a rumor
that he and his parents and his tutors have been kept on a military
base somewhere near Beijing, taken right out of Tibet and right out
of their home and their town and community and monastery, and
supposedly, he is well and this and that, but no one knows because
they have never allowed anyone to see him, and I’ve heard rumors
that he has been unwell from sort of psychics and things, but nobody
really knows. The Dalai Lama was afraid they would try to brainwash
him or something, or at one time he was. But nobody can say. He
might be passed on again, or he might be fine. You just can’t
tell.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thurman, for those who
are not familiar with the story of Tibet, if, in just a thumbnail
sketch, you can give us a brief history.
ROBERT
THURMAN: All right, Amy. I will do it. Tibet has always been a
separate country. It’s a separate culture. The Tibetan language is
different from Chinese. The people are different. And they live in
especially rugged high-altitude territory over two miles in height,
average altitude actually 14,000 feet, almost three miles. So
they’re very, very different.
However, during two periods of
history, one was when the Mongol Empire controlled all of East Asia
and actually much of Central Asia, and the second was where the
Manchurians, which are non-Chinese people also, they controlled a
large amount of Eastern and Central Asia. In those two periods, the
Tibetans were under the protection of them, although those two
people, the Mongols and Manchus, never directly inhabited Tibet, and
no Chinese people inhabited Tibet.
Then in 1950 Mao Tse-Tung
decided they wanted to turn what had been an imperial protectorate
into their own national territory. So they invaded Tibet, and they
occupied it. And the West couldn’t defend—although even the West was
resisting the Chinese in Korea at the time, in South Korea, but they
couldn’t do anything in Tibet, because Nehru wanted to get along
with Mao. He naively thought Mao was going to be his biggest pal.
So, he wouldn’t allow any resistance against the Chinese invasion in
1950, 1951 or 1952, and wouldn’t sort of speak out at the U.N. about
it. So, although there were some resolutions deploring the Chinese
invasion, basically everybody got all confused ever since
then.
And the Chinese have been pretending, trying to
pretend—the sad thing is that because the Chinese have been trying
to pretend all along that they have been in Tibet for thousands of
years and that Tibet is just a province of China, they have had a
genocidal imperative to destroy Tibetan culture and also, if
possible, replace Tibetan people by Chinese colonists, so that they
can make it look in the future someday as if China always was in
Tibet, you know, and change the language, make the Tibetans all
speak Chinese, etc., basically culturecidal and genocidal, just in
order to be able to claim a sort of beginningless ownership of the
territory, which is rewriting and distorting history, in fact, since
they never did live there. And that’s a very tragic
thing.
This has caused the Tibetans to be a kind of like a
Cambodian holocaust really, where they lost over a million people
and over 6,000 monasteries were destroyed, and it’s really been
terrible. And it still is. Then they relented a little bit in the
1980s, realizing they were not succeeding, even though they killed
so many people. And they couldn’t really colonize such a high
altitude place very economically.
But then, unfortunately,
after the Soviet Union deconstructed its empire and let go of
Kazakhstan and the Ukraine and all these countries, China got
afraid, Deng Xiaoping was afraid they would have to give up Tibet
and then they have a domino-theory paranoia that they would have to
give up Xinjiang, which is actually Turkistan, they would have to
give up Inner Mongolia, which is actually Mongolia, so they got
really paranoid and they’ve redoubled and tripled their efforts to
crush Tibetan culture and replace the Tibetan people with Chinese
colonists. And so it’s still a very, very tragic, very, very
stressful situation.
One reason the world is so confused
about it is because the Dalai Lama is such an extraordinary person,
he has pledged to fight for liberation only through nonviolent
measures. And he has even offered to accept membership in a Chinese
union as long as Tibet has a kind of “one country, two systems”
situation like Hong Kong supposedly does, and like Taiwan would be
offered, supposedly. Although they, you know, they don’t really
expect that to happen. The Chinese wouldn’t have done it in the way
they have behaved in the past, but the Dalai Lama always remains
hopeful and always remains gentle, and he always maintains
nonviolence as his policy. So people are confused because people are
only used to liberation struggles where people do terrorism and blow
things up, you know what I mean? And he has always refused do
that.
AMY GOODMAN: Reed Brody, let me just end with
you. How does this fit in with China’s plans for its
future?
REED BRODY: This is part of the attempt to
control the future of Tibet. Traditionally, the Panchen Lama has led
the search for the new Dalai Lama. The Chinese are playing for time
and hoping that at a certain point, obviously, the Dalai Lama will
die. The Dalai Lama has said that if he dies while Tibet is still
part of—enslaved in China, that his reincarnation would be found
outside of China. But obviously the Chinese are looking at this
differently. They want to control the Lama line and therefore
control the future of Tibet.
AMY GOODMAN: Reed Brody
of Human Rights Watch, Dr. Robert Thurman of Columbia University, I
want to thank you both for being with us.
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