The battle for the boy Lama
On May 14, 1995, a six-year-old boy was plucked from obscurity in Tibet, declared the 11th Panchen Lama, and promptly disappeared.
Gedhun Nyima was announced as the second-most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism by the exiled Dalai Lama. Within three days Chinese authorities had taken the boy, and his family, away. He has never been seen again.
In his place, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) picked their own Panchen Lama: Gyaltsen Norbu, the son of two Party members, described by critics as a “stooge” of the government. Also six years old at the time, he was raised partly in Beijing under protective guard, and was chosen using a traditional method of drawing lots from a golden urn - a custom, many said, which was easily exploited.
More than twenty years after Gedhun Nyima’s abduction, the fate of the true Panchen Lama, and the ensuing fallout, matters more than ever. As the 14th Dalai Lama - revered in Tibet, reviled in Beijing -
