The Society for Threatened Peoples starts a campaign for an 11-year-old boy from Tibet

More than five years ago on May 17, 1995, Panchen Lama (now 11 years old) was abducted with his parents from Tibet by Chinese security forces. In order to clarify the fate of the "youngest political prisoner in the world," who was just six years old when abducted, the Society for Threatened Peoples (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker/GfbV) requested parents and children to stop purchasing toys "Made in China." "We can place a token for human rights in Tibet with this renunciation of toys from China," explained the Society's expert on Asia, Ulrich Delius, Tuesday in Goettingen. The boycott should continue until the release of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. He is being held in an unknown place.

Chinese authorities reacted with abduction after the Dalai Lama acknowledged the boy as the eleventh Panchen Lama. The six-year-old had been recognized by the Dalai Lama on May 14, 1995, and is considered the second-most important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism. Only seven months after the abduction, on December 8, 1995, the atheistic regime identified a boy from a strict party-line socialist family, Gyaincain Norbu, (now 10 years old) as the eleventh Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama continues to deny him recognition.

After countless international protests, on May 28, 1996, the Chinese authorities confessed that they had the boy and his parents in their custody and detained in a secret location. "We are especially concerned with the fate of this abducted boy," said Delius.

In November 1999, the news service had reported of the probable death of the abducted, based on reports from police sources in the province of Gansu. The body of a dead child, who had strikingly resembled the disappeared, was transported under strict police protection to a crematorium. Chinese authorities deny the death of the high religious dignitary, but continue to refuse an independent meeting of the boy and his relatives with various politicians and administrators from around the world, despite numerous appeals from the United Nations.