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Tibetan groups in Canada protest the Panchen Lama’s incarceration
The Tibetan community in Canada staged a protest in Toronto on the anniversary of the incarceration of the Panchen Lama by Chinese authorities, even as an MP raised the issue in the House of Commons.
The Tibetan community in Canada staged a protest in Toronto on the anniversary of the incarceration of the Panchen Lama by Chinese authorities, even as an MP raised the issue in the House of Commons.
On March 17, 1995, the 11th Panchen Lama, the second highest rank for a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan culture, Gedhun Chokye Nyima, was taken into custody, along with his family by Chinese police in the Lhari county of Tibet.
That action came just three days after the Dalai Lama had recognised the then six-year-old as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
The protest in Toronto was held in front of the Chinese Consulate by activists from the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Toronto or RTYC Toronto and Tibetan Women’s Association of Ontario.
Sunny Sonam, president of RTYC Toronto and the principal organizer of the protest, said, “Today is a day we should not forget. This was the date on which the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) kidnapped the Panchen Lama and his family. Google ‘the world’s youngest political prisoner’ and his name will come up.”
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, an MP from the Bloc Québécois, addressed the House of Commons on this anniversary in “solidarity” with the Tibetans. His remarks, made in French, he said, were necessary as the Panchen Lama was “a symbol of great importance for the Tibetan community currently deprived of its traditions.”
He pointed out that at the time he was arrested by Beijing, the Panchen Lama was “above all, a child.”
The Canada Tibet Committee thanked the MP on Twitter for his speech marking the anniversary of the day when the Panchen Lama was “forcibly abducted along with his family at the age of six.”
As the issue of Chinese interference in the Federal elections in Canada in 2019 and 2021 has dominated headlines in recent months, Sonam said Canadians were showing more “compassion, trying to understand” the Tibetan cause.
