A candle vigil For The Panchen lama parcours 25th of April starts at 18:00 hrs. You can bring a Candle with you, if you like. Starts at the St Baafsplein - Mageleinstraat - Kalandestraat - Koestraat - Kortedagsteeg - Walpoortstraat - St Pietersnieuwstraat - Lammerstraat - Woodrow Wilsonplein / Zuid... underneath, the flyer who will be distributed that day, (in Flemish) LAAT PANCHEN LAMA VRIJ Vandaag herdenken we met deze kaarswake de 21ste verjaardag van Gendhun Choekyi Nyima, elfde Panchen Lama.** Hij werd op 17 mei 1995 op 6jarige leeftijd samen met zijn ouders ontvoerd en sindsdien is er van hen, ondanks internationale druk, geen teken van leven. De Chinezen wezen intussen ook een eigen Panchen Lama aan. ** De Panchen Lama is na de Dalai Lama de hoogste spirituele leider van de Gelugpa (belangrijkste school van Tibetaans boeddhisme); speelt ook een grote rol bij de zoektocht naar een nieuwe Dalai Lama. Meer weten over Tibet of actief iets doen? (English): RELEASE THE PANCHEN LAMA Today, with this Candle Vigil, we remember the 21st anniversary of Gendhun Choekyi Nyima,The 11thPanchen Lama.** On the 17th of May 1995, at the age of 6! he was kidnapped together, with his parents, since then, despite international pressure, there's no sign of life. Meanwhile the Chinese governement, has chosen a boy other than the Panchen lama as their Panchen lama. After the Dalai lama, is the Panchen lama the highest spiritual leader of the Gelugpa tradition (most important school in Tibetan Buddhism). He plays also a key role in finding the new Dalai lama. About HH the Panchen Lama In his preface to " A Poisoned Arrow", Colombia University Tibetologist, Robbie Barnett, writes: "For three and half decades the history of modern Tibet has revolved around one document more than any other: the previously unseen 70,000 Character Petition of the 10th Panchen Lama. 21 years have passed since the death of the leaders to whom it was addressed and the decline of the ideologies they espoused, but the Petition is still classified by the Chinese authorities as highly confidential, preseumably because it is seen as a continuing source of potential damage to the leadership. Indeed, no other document exists in China, as far as we know, in which a senior official attacks so explicitly and in such detail the policies and practices of Chairman Mao. The Party istelf ruled that the Petition exceeded, in its criticism of the Party, that other famous internal critique of Mao Zedong, the 10,000 character letter hich led to the downfall of General Peng Dehuai in 1959. The significance of the Petition thus goes beyond the value to Tibetans and to students of Tibetan history. Although the examples it presented were taken from events which took place in Tibetan areas between 1959 and 1962, the case it made was relevant to the whole of China. The document was compiled over a three year period as a result of observations made during inspection tours of Xinjiang and Southern China as well as Tibet, and following a long series of meetings in which representatives from other parts of China described the situatons in their areas, in most of which famine was rife. Indeed, had the suggestions made in the Petition been accepted and followed through, the consequences could have affected all of China, and could even have altered the position of Mao Zedong himself. Instead, the writer was dismissed from public office and sent for the next 14 years to prison or to live under virtual house arrest. Today, the subjects he discussed remain taboo or are the subject of flat denials. The Great Leap Forward is acknowledged to have been a catastrophe, but the causes are still officially attributed to poor weather condiions and the Soviet debt, rather than to mistaken policies. Cultural and linguistic decline in Tibet are accepted today to have been an aspect of "leftist deviation" in the Cultural Revolution period ( 1966-76 ), but not cknowledged to have taken place in any other period, including earlier periods when Deng Xiaoping was in power. The Panchen Lama was 24 years old when he completed his report; he was 40 when he was released from detention. By the end of his life his confidence in the criticisms he had raised in the Petition had not diminished, and he appears to have retracted few if any of its observations. When his original manuscript was returned to him, ten years after his release from custody, he is said to have wrapped it in yellow satin, as if it were a religious manuscript. We also know, from a speech he gave in 1987, that he considered the substance of his 1962 report, and its critique of leftism, to be relevant to the situation in the 1980s, a period which is generally considered relatively liberal. Had he lived, there can be little doubt that he would have felt that critique to have been relevant to conditions in Tibet today". Tibet day in Gent on the 7th of August more information coming soon. Top