Tibetans decry Chinese claims on Dalai Lama successor

Tribune News Service 
New Delhi, July 20

The office of the Dalai Lama has sought to reject renewed claims by China that it alone has the right to choose his next successor. A senior Chinese official had recently said that Beijing will reject any reincarnation of the Dalai Lama born among Tibetan exiles in India or elsewhere.

“The Dalai Lama’s reincarnation cannot be decided by his personal wish or some group of people living in other countries,’’ a senior Chinese official posted in Tibet told a group of visiting Indian journalists.

In response, his office here flagged a statement by the Sikyong (Ruler) of the Central Tibetan Administration Lobsang Sangay, where he said: “If the Chinese leadership believes in rebirth and religion so much, instead of worrying about the reincarnation of a “devil,” they should —as His Holiness himself has remarked—start with finding the reincarnation of revolutionary leaders such as Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping”.

His office also reiterated the Dalai Lama’s statement when the controversy had flared up earlier to indicate that the position of on his successor among Tibetan exiles in India and elsewhere remains changed. The Dalai Lama had remarked on the irony of Chinese attempts to seek to recognise his reincarnation and said it “is particularly inappropriate for Chinese communists, who explicitly reject even the idea of past and future lives, let alone the concept of reincarnate Tulkus, to meddle in the system of reincarnation and especially the reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas”.

He further said that “apart from the reincarnation recognised through such legitimate methods, no recognition or acceptance should be given to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China”.