EU Demands China End Interference in Religious Leader Selection, Including Dalai Lama
By Tenzin Chokyi
DHARAMSALA, 16 June: Amid growing international pressure on China over its interference in the succession plan for the next Dalai Lama, the European Union has strongly criticised Beijing for violating religious freedom and exerting state control over the selection of religious leaders during the 40th EU-China Human Rights Dialogue.
According to a statement by the EU’s External Action Service, essentially the EU’s foreign ministry, the EU has expressed serious concerns regarding the treatment of religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities under Chinese rule during the Dialogue, held in Brussels on 13 June with the Chinese officials.
The EU has specifically emphasised that the selection of religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, must take place without Chinese interference and in accordance with established religious norms.
“The EU underlined that the selection of religious leaders should happen without government interference and in accordance with religious norms, including for the succession of the Dalai Lama,” the statement reads.
At the dialogue, the EU has told Beijing about the importance of being transparent and accountable and called on “China to end practices such as arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and ill-treatment”.
One of the key issues raised at the dialogue was the case of the 11th Panchen Lama, who has been missing for 30 years since his abduction by Chinese authorities in 1995, when he was just six years old.
The EU demanded that China “provide transparent and reliable information” regarding the Panchen Lama’s whereabouts and well-being.
The EU has raised concerns about” China’s increasingly frequent use of transnational repression practices to pressure and control Chinese overseas nationals.”
Additionally, the EU has “raised a number of emblematic individual cases, calling for the immediate release of those detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their human rights.”
The EU also made specific calls to improve the treatment and conditions of Tibetan activists, writers, and religious figures, including Go Sherab Gyatso, Tashi Dorje, Anya Sengdra, Tsongon Tsering, Drugdra, Lobsang Khedrub, and Lobsang Gephel.
As in the past, China firmly rejected these concerns, dismissing them as internal affairs where no external interference is allowed.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that Beijing protested against the EU Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World 2024, reiterating that issues related to East-Turkestan, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as individual judicial cases, “are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no external interference.”
The Chinese government has further dismissed the EU’s accusation as groundless and, in turn, pointed to alleged human rights issues within the EU member states.
With no acknowledgement of its own rights violations, China has urged the EU to “respect China’s human rights development path” and to refrain from what it described as “politicizing human rights issues and applying double standards, and to refrain from engaging in confrontations and megaphone diplomacy on multilateral platforms.”
While China has rejected the core allegations, both sides have reportedly agreed to continue their diplomatic exchanges in view of the next round of Human Rights Dialogue, to be held in China in 2026.
