Tibet supporters to stage protest outside Chinese Embassy in Vilnius

VILNIUS - Tibet supporters will stage a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Vilnius on Friday to draw attention to the situation of political prisoners imprisoned in the country and human rights violations in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang).

"The date chosen for the picket is not a coincidence. On May 17, 1995, Chinese officers arrested and six-year-old Gedun Chokyi Niyim, who had been proclaimed the incarnation of the XI Panchen Lama just three days earlier, and his family members and took them to an unknown destination. Since then, the Panchen Lama has been regarded as the youngest political prisoner in the world," the organizers say.

The story of the boy's abduction and probable imprisonment, they say, "is a testimony to China's brutal and inhumane policy of systematically targeting the Tibetan people for more than six decades".

In February 2023, three United Nations experts stated that around one million Tibetan children had been separated from their families and forcibly assimilated into Chinese boarding schools.