The Chinese Communist Party is preparing to hijack an ancient faith. Freedom-loving people cannot let this succeed.

In early September, dozens of high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist monks and religious scholars gathered in the Chinese city of Lanzhou to discuss reincarnation, a major tenet of their faith. Observers would naturally be perplexed as to how the participants “stressed the importance” of the approval of The Chinese communist regime “in recognition of reincarnated Tibetan religious leaders.”

The mystery has a simple and sinister answer: the meeting was organized by the Chinese Communist Party itself, through the Buddhist Association of China, part of its United Front Work Department, which controls all expression religious in China.

It is shameful that the atheist CCP is attempting to enter the afterlife to take control of religious leaders who have escaped its grasp on earth.

The CCP’s paranoia and brutality weigh heavily on people of faith in Chinaand Tibetan Buddhists are among the most mistreated. The CCP’s efforts to destroy the identity of Tibetans and establishing total control over their lives are considered to constitute crimes against humanityand Tibet was a testing ground for repression techniques used in the CCP genocide against the Uyghurs.

The CCP is extremely hostile towards the 14th^th Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who fled to India after the CCP’s annexation of Tibet in the 1950s. Since then, the Dalai Lama has been an active proponent of greater autonomy for the Tibetans, founding the Central Tibetan Administration, the government of Tibet in exile based in northern India.

For the CCP, Tibetans’ reverence for the Dalai Lama poses a threat to its control over Tibet, which has experienced periods of unrest caused by CCP repression. The future of the Dalai Lama as an institution is therefore linked to the future of Tibet itself.

Next year the Dalai Lama will be 90 years old and expected to announce the plans of his reincarnation and succession. He has REMARK that he could reincarnate outside China, leaving the next Dalai Lama outside the control of the Chinese government. He also has considered the possibility of choosing a successor during his lifetime. This would represent a break from the more common Buddhist tradition, in which, after the Dalai Lama’s death, a council of senior religious figures identifies a young boy as his successor and reincarnation.

The Dalai Lama also suggested he can be reincarnated as a woman, or even give up reincarnation completely.

For the CCP, the succession of the Dalai Lama is an opportunity to take even tighter control of the Tibetan Buddhist faith and ensure that its practitioners no longer have a spiritual leader to turn to beyond China’s borders and beyond the reach of the CCP. The CCP has been preparing for decades to hijack the succession of the Dalai Lama.

In 1995, the Dalai Lama identified a young boy in Tibet as the 11^th Panchen Lama, second religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism. Almost immediately afterwards, the CCP forcibly disappeared the then 6-year-old child, who has not been seen since. The CCP then named its own Panchen Lama.

In 2007, the Chinese government published regulations stipulating that “(n)o group or individual may, without authorization, carry out activities related to the search for or recognition of the living children of Buddha’s soul in reincarnation. » In recent years, China has underlines that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama “must comply with Chinese laws and regulations”.

The United States recently adopted the Resolve Tibet lawbipartisan legislation challenging the PRC’s misleading historical claims about Tibet and urging Beijing to agree to talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama. In June, a bipartisan congress delegation met the Dalai Lama in northern India, warning that China is “trying to erase (Tibetan) culture…”. They’re trying something we can’t allow them to get away with.

India also has an interest in preventing the CCP’s subversion of the Dalai Lama’s succession. In addition to housing the Tibetan government in exile, India’s Tawang district lies in what was once part of the historic Tibetan nation and was the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama. It is also the site of one of the largest Buddhist monasteries in the world. Beijing has opposite the visits of the Dalai Lama to Tawang, while China complaints the district as part of a broader “Southern Tibet”.

Although India’s deliberations around the Dalai Lama’s succession have remained largely silent, a former Indian ambassador to China declared that India would not be “comfortable with China trying to control this process”.

With the 90th birthday of the Dalai Lama^th birthday next July, discussions on his succession will soon be concluded. The CCP has been preparing for decades to make the next Dalai Lama an instrument serving Beijing’s interests. The American government is well aware of this project. In his statement marking the Dalai Lama’s 89th birthday^th anniversary, the State Department reiterated its support for the “ability of Tibetans to freely choose and worship their religious leaders without interference.”

But it will take more than platitudes, and the United States should engage now with representatives of the Dalai Lama’s office, the Tibetan government in exile and the Indian government to better prepare for succession.

The Chinese Communist Party cannot be allowed to cancel the religious freedom of the Tibetan people and Buddhists around the world.