Happy 17th Birthday Panchen Lama
(this photo is crap)

April 25th was the 17th Birthday of the Panchen Lama, and the locals put on a huge concert to celebrate his birthday and protest his imprisonment.

In 1995 His Holiness the Dalai Lama identified a 6 year old boy, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama (who has died in suspicious circumstances after being arrested by the Chinese in 1989). The Panchen Lama is the second most significant political and spiritual leader for the Tibetans and is, in time, responsible for identifying the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

Unfortunately, shortly after he was identified the Chinese kidnapped him and his family. They have not been seen or heard from since. If alive, he is the world's youngest political prisoner.

For many years the Chinese Government denied knowing his whereabouts and actually put forth another young child as the Panchen Lama, a child who is made to denounce the Dalai Lama and publicly proclaim that Tibet is an inseperable part of China.

Despite not knowing whether he is still living or not, the Tibetans in exile pray for the release of the original Panchen Lama and do not recognise China's puppet Lama.

The party was great but also very sad. We got there a bit late, but after meeting up with our monk friends Gyatso, Ngawang and Samden we watched some excellent Tibetan musicians and were particularly moved by one man who gave a fantastic speech in Tibetan and then in English! To hear the entire crowd - local men, women, children, monks and foreigners, yell 'FREE THE PANCHEN LAMA. FREE TIBET' over and over' in unison was very emotional.

Despite the quality and popularity of the Tibetan musos, for some reason the organisers had decided to give the headlining spot to the couple in this pic. They were introduced as being from England but were clearly crazy Israelis. The guy wore stupid red sunglasses, played guitar and sang out of key. The woman played fiddle, flute and sang marginally better. Look out for their classics such as "Give love to the World" and "See the Beauty...in Everything" - destined to be hits.