11th Panchen Lama controversy
The PRC had established its own search committee, which included Chadrel Rinpoche and other monks, and wanted to use a lottery system referred to as the Golden Urn.
Before his death, the 10th Panchen Lama, Choekyi Gyaltsen, had been held for 15 years as a political prisoner of China, and after his release wrote the 70,000 Character Petition to Mao Zedong on 18 May 1962.
As a Tibetan search process began, the Chinese state-run CCTV network states that three days after the death of the 10th Panchen Lama,[6] the Premier of the State Council published its decision on how the 11th Panchen Lama would be selected based on the feedback gathered from the committee of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery and monks on 30 January 1989.
China continues to detain Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family in a place whose location has not been divulged to the public.
[15] Chadrel Rinpoche, the Panchen Lama's senior Khenpo, was arrested at the Chamdo Airport while returning from Beijing, on 14 May 1995.
[17][18] He was then incarcerated in China, re-incarcerated under house arrest in a Chinese military camp near Lhasa, and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization reports he died of poisoning in 2011.
Five United Nations committees have opened cases,[4] while numerous governments, including the European Parliament, Canada, U.K., and U.S. have called for China to release the 11th Panchen Lama.
Congressman Jim McGovern said the Panchen Lama "will mark his 30th birthday as one of the world's longest-held prisoners of conscience", and referred to his enforced disappearance as a violation of the religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists while also stating that the alternative Panchen Lama has been victimized by China as "a consequence of its policies to undermine and control the Tibetan people.
