China’s efforts to intervene over next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama: International Tibet Network (ITN)

Berkeley: The Chinese administration has intensified its interference in the reincarnation process of the next Dalai Lama, a practice the Tibetan culture has upheld for centuries, a report by the International Tibet Network (ITN) claimed on Wednesday.

The 30-page report titled ‘Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and the Geopolitics of Reincarnation’ provided evidence of China’s plans to use the passing of Dalai Lama as a ‘strategic’ and ‘historic’ opportunity for Beijing to end international support for Tibet’s cause, signaling their desire to exclude the Dalai Lama from playing any role in his own succession.

The report cited two Chinese policy documents that reveal an ominous strategy designed by the country to control the matters of Tibetan religious identity and target the Tibetan people and the broader international Buddhist community as a means to “secure authority in Tibet and build influence across the Tibetan Buddhist world.”

The ITN report claimed that, in 2011, after understanding Chinese propaganda, the 14th Dalai Lama had issued a written document concerning his succession in which, he stated that he may appoint someone as his successor while he is still alive, a practice that has been rooted in tibet’s history for centuries.

However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rejected the document, claiming that “only Beijing can approve his successor”.

According to the report, “China’s ‘Sinicization’ of Tibetan Buddhism and its interference in the reincarnation system has far-reaching implications and seeks to finally break and reshape Tibetan identity. Sinicized Tibetan Buddhism aims to break the deep connection of Tibetan people with the Dalai Lama and involves a dystopian system of high-tech surveillance and policing of monasteries and nunneries. Thousands of monks and nuns have been expelled from religious institutes, and some subjected to extreme ‘patriotic re-education’ campaigns that have involved “torture and sexual abuse,” the report added.

Previously, in 1954, Mao Zedong famously told the young Dalai Lama that “religion is poison”. Since China’s invasion of Tibet in 1949s and 50s, it has destroyed thousands of monasteries, burnt religious texts on great pyres, tortured religious teachers and forced them to undergo “patriotic re-education” and “hard labour”. China continues to annihilate Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet by demolishing religious structures, enforcing ideological education on the monks, and unleashing its virulent campaigns against the Dalai Lama labelling him as a “splittist” and a “wolf in monk’s robes”.

The ITN report cited the findings of the internal CCP briefings, which state that Beijing has developed a public relations strategy targeting Western governments and media outlets involving a plan to end international support for Tibet in what they term the ‘post-Dalai era’. Part of this plan includes installing their own Dalai Lama candidate.

China views control over Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation as a critical component in its efforts to secure authority in Tibet, eliminate Tibet’s linguistic, cultural, and religious identity, and build influence and dominance across the Buddhist world.

A precedent was set in 1995 by Beijing’s seizure and disappearance of the young boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, recognised by the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama, and the installation of their candidate, Gyaltsen Norbu, in its place.

China has intensified political education and indoctrination efforts, targeting not only monks and nuns but also lay Tibetans at local levels to break existing loyalties to the exiled spiritual leader. (ANI)

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