matter. The leaders of the Chinese government wanted a process under their authority. Beijing planned to use a group of monks to identify a group of candidates, not only one, and then to use the golden urn to randomly select one of them, and to exclude the Dalai Lama from the process altogether. Beijing later allowed Tashi Lhunpo Monastery's head Khenpo Chadrel Rinpoche, the head of the search team, to communicate with the Dalai Lama in hopes that a mutually acceptable process and candidate could be accomplished. In March 1995, Chinese government officials proposed drawing a name from three to five slips in the urn. On 14 May 1995, the Dalai Lama preempted the officials' drawing of names by publicly recognizing Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama. On 17 May, the Chinese government abducted the recognized Panchen Lama. Then in November 1995 they selected a different boy, Gyaincain Norbu, using the golden urn lottery system. This decision was immediately denounced by the Dalai Lama. China continues to detain Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family in a place whose location has not been divulged to the public. Chadrel Rinpoche, the Panchen Lama's senior Khenpo, was arrested at the Chamdo Airport while returning from Beijing, on 14 May 1995. Two years later on 8 May 1997, Chadrel Rinpoche was sentenced to six years in prison for splittism and betraying state secrets. He was then incarcerated in China, re-incarcerated under house arrest in a Chinese military camp near Lhasa, and the Central Tibetan Administration reports he died of poisoning in 2011. The Dalai Lama has denounced China by saying "the person who reincarnates has sole legitimate authority over where and how he or she takes rebirth and how that reincarnation is to be recognized." "It is a reality that no one else can force the person concerned, or manipulate him or her," "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." Recent developments In April 2019, U.S. Congressman Jim McGovern said the Panchen Lama "will mark his 30th birthday as one of the world's longest-held prisoners of conscience", and referred to his enforced disappearance as a violation of the religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists while also stating