The Exiled Tibetan government on Tuesday released a video of politicians around the world wishing Tibet’s Panchen Lama – who has been missing since he was a boy – a happy 28th birthday. 
 
 The Panchen Lama is the second highest Tibetan spiritual leader, after the Dalai Lama. Only six years old at the time, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was named as the 11th Panchen Lama by the Dalai Lama in 1995 and detained by Chinese authorities, along with his family, soon after his appointment. The government selected its own 11th Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, in the same year. 
 
 “The world misses him and wishes to have him back in the free world,” the video said. It contained greetings from politicians and ex-politicians from India, France, Switzerland, Australia, Italy, and Canada – including Arno Kompatscher, governor of the semi-autonomous region of South Tyrol in Italy, and Consiglio Di Nino, a retired Canadian senator. 
 
 Chinese officials said in 2015 that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has attended school, is “living a normal life” and does not want to be disturbed. 
 
 Tibet has been under Chinese control since the 1950s. Beijing claims that Tibetans enjoy extensive freedoms and has long denied accusations of political and religious repression. The current Dalai Lama was exiled in 1959 after a failed uprising against the Chinese occupation. 
 
 The occasion of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima’s 28th birthday was marked by groups in Dharamsala, India – the location of the exiled Central Tibetan Administration – with commemorative events, according to US-backed Radio Free Asia. 
 
 Tsering Tsomo, the executive director of the NGO Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, told RFA at a seminar held by the Tibetan Women’s Association on Tuesday: “The Panchen Lama is already 28 years old, but why is the Chinese government still hiding him? If what the Chinese authorities said about the Panchen Lama ‘receiving an education like other children, and growing up healthily,’ is true, then they should reveal his whereabouts to the world.” 
 
 The Dalai Lama and the Chinese government have long disagreed on who has the authority to appoint the next Tibetan leader. Traditionally, the Panchen Lama is partly responsible for finding the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama – and vice versa. But the officially atheist Communist Party maintains that they have the sole authority to made the decision about the reincarnation. 
 
 The appointment of two different leaders could split Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama’s death. 
 
 The 81-year-old Dalai Lama, who Chinese authorities see as a dangerous separatist, has not given a definite answer with regards to the question of his succession. He said it is possible that he may be the last Dalai Lama. He also said that he may be reincarnated outside Chinese Tibet. ||||| Tibetan advocacy organizations and international rights groups called this week on China to release a high-ranking Tibetan religious figure taken into custody 22 years ago and held incommunicado ever since. 
 
 
 
 Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, now 28 years old, was detained together with his family by Chinese authorities in 1995 after he was identified by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second most-senior Buddhist monk. 
 
 
 
 A Beijing-backed candidate, Gyaincain Norbu, was then installed by China in his place, and remains unpopular among Tibetans. 
 
 
 
 Nothing has been learned of the fate of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima since he vanished with his family in detention, and requests by the United Nations and other international agencies and human rights organizations to visit him have consistently been refused by Beijing. 
 
 
 
 Speaking in an interview with RFA's Tibetan Service, Dardon Sharling—a secretary of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Dharamsala, India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA)—described the Panchen Lama's continued disappearance as the "greatest representation of China's overall policy toward Tibet and Tibetans." 
 
 
 
 "The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance has told CTA officials that the issue of the Panchen Lama remains an 'unresolved case,'" Sharling said. 
 
 
 
 China's refusal to allow the young lama to fulfill his traditional role is a "huge loss not only for the Panchen Lama himself but also for Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan people," Sonam Gyaltsen—a professor of history at the College of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarah, in Dharamsala—told RFA. 
 
 
 
 "Getting a proper spiritual education is the most important cause for a reincarnated lama to be able to continue the work of his predecessor," Gyaltsen said. 
 
 
 
 'Serious international crime' 
 
 
 
 In an open letter released on April 25, the Panchen Lama’s birthday, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner Tenzin Dorjee chose words that spoke directly to Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, voicing his sadness that the missing Panchen Lama may never read his words. 
 
 
 
 “Ever since you were abducted as a young child at the age of six, the Chinese government has refused to share even basic information about you and your whereabouts,” Dorjee wrote. 
 
 
 
 “Please know that I think about you every day, and as each year passes, my resolve to find you and restore you to your rightful role becomes stronger.” 
 
 
 
 “The continued detention of the Panchen Lama in secret is an act of enforced disappearance,” the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) added in a statement this week. 
 
 
 
 “[This] is a serious international crime that violates multiple human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major international human rights instruments,” TCHRD said. 
 
 
 
 “TCHRD calls on the Chinese government to end the enforced disappearance of the Panchen Lama and allow him to live like a ‘normal’ human being with all the basic rights such as life, livelihood, and [freedom of] movement,” the rights group said. 
 
 
 
 Interference from Beijing 
 
 
 
 The selection of reincarnate lamas in Tibetan areas of China is now subject to approval by Beijing, with high-ranking religious teachers often cultivated by the government as “patriotic lamas”-—politically reliable figures who will not call for Tibetan independence from Chinese rule. 
 
 
 
 China is now keen to engineer a process that produces a pro-Beijing monk as the next Dalai Lama when the present holder of the title, now 81, eventually passes away. 
 
 
 
 “Without any recognition from the Dalai Lama, the Chinese authorities can never be able to put the stamp of legitimacy to their selection of any religious leader, whether it is the Panchen Lama or a future Dalai Lama,” Bhuchung Tsering, vice president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in an April 25 statement. 
 
 
 
 “China might want to have its own version of Rule by Incarnation,” Tsering said. “But it is the will of the believers that will really matter.” 
 
 
 
 “The earlier the Chinese authorities realize this, the better it will be for them.” 
 
 Reported by Urgyen Tenzin for RFA's Tibetan Service. Translated by Kalden Lodoe. Written in English by Richard Finney.
– This week marked the 28th birthday of Tibet’s Panchen Lama, reinvigorating calls for his release from detention by the Chinese government. Radio Free Asia reports that at just 6 years old, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family were detained when the exiled Dalai Lama named him the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. Chinese authorities swiftly removed Nyima and installed government-backed Gyaincain Norbu to the religious and political position. The role of the Panchen Lama is the second most senior monk in Tibetan tradition, and Gyaincain Norbu remains an unsatisfactory candidate to many Tibetans who consider Nyima’s detention a tragedy. “Please know that I think about you every day, and as each year passes, my resolve to find you and restore you to your rightful role becomes stronger,” the head of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote in an open letter to the missing Panchen Lama. Little has emerged about him over the last 22 years. According to the Hong Kong Free Press, Chinese officials stated in 2015 that he doesn’t want to be bothered and is “living a normal life,” including attending school. But Beijing has denied the United Nations as well as human rights group's requests to check up on him. Current law dictates that reincarnate lamas must be approved by Beijing in order to discourage a rallying call for Tibetan independence, a process that could instate a new “patriotic lama” once the current Dalai Lama, who is 81, one day passes away.