The Cloud Maker

Author’s Note

The real eleventh Panchen Lama

After the death of the tenth Panchen Lama in 1989, the search for his reincarnation soon became mired in political controversy.

Despite the current Dalai Lama recognising a small boy of only six years old called Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the rightful successor in 1995, the Chinese authorities immediately arrested the head of the search committee under charges of treason and had the boy and his family removed from Tibet.

A new search committee was then promptly installed who ‘chose’ Gyancain Norbu as the next Panchen Lama. He still holds this position to this day.

No one has seen or knows the whereabouts of the six-year-old boy, while the Chinese authorities claim to have taken him for ‘reasons of his own security’. Even now, in 2009, no humanitarian groups have been allowed to verify whether he is alive or not.