(Please return your postcards to us by 13 May)

Earlier this year we launched a campaign demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama. We produced postcards addressed to China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao with a target of sending 10,000 postcards. We need your help in a last effort to reach our target. Please distribute the attached postcards as widely as possible or collect signatures and deliver them to our office by Friday 13 May.

On Tuesday 17 May Free Tibet Campaign will hold a vigil in front of the Chinese Embassy, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Panchen Lama's kidnapping by the Chinese Government. We are planning to deliver the 10,000 postcards during the vigil.

Background
On 15 May 1995 six year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognized by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, one of Tibet's most important religious leaders who died in 1989. Two days after the Dalai Lama's announcement, Gedhun and his family were taken under escort from their home to Beijing and have not been seen since. Four months later the Chinese Government selected Gyaltsen Norbu, a boy from the same area of Tibet as Gedhun, to be Panchen Lama. Norbu has been educated away from Tashilhunpo Monastery (the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama), though he has returned there for brief visits on rare occasions.

The replacement of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima by another child will have far-reaching effects on the political and spiritual future of Tibet, even accepting that the Panchen Lama's education would be controlled by Beijing. There is a tradition of mutual recognition between the Dalai and Panchen Lamas - a special bond between the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people. Both are usually involved in each other's spiritual education and have at times been involved in appointing each other's reincarnation, which means that when the 14th Dalai Lama dies, the identification of his reincarnation will be even more fraught with controversy.

Determined to control religion in Tibet, the Chinese Government interfered with the Tibetan religious tradition, kidnapped Gedhun and his family and appointed an alternative Panchen Lama. In the ten years since, the Chinese Government has consistently denied requests from the United Nations and governments for access to Gedhun and his family, claiming that he was leading a normal life and did not want to be disturbed.