Tibet group urges ​Trump to press Xi on Panchen Lama’s release

The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) has urged US President Donald Trump to publicly press Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tibet and seek the release of the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, amid concerns over the alleged use of artificial intelligence to monitor Tibetan groups.

The advocacy organisation made the appeal on Wednesday (local time), ahead of Xi’s planned visit to Washington. It called on Trump to push for the resumption of Sino-Tibetan dialogue without preconditions, including talks involving representatives of the Dalai Lama and elected Tibetan leaders.

ICT president Tencho Gyatso said Trump should use his meeting with Xi to advance dialogue on Tibet, particularly over what the organisation described as growing threats to Tibetan identity.

“President Trump must therefore uphold this policy and use his meeting with Xi to press for the resumption of Sino-Tibetan dialogue -- especially at this critical juncture, when China’s new, so-called ‘Ethnic Unity and Progress Law’ threatens the very foundations of Tibetan identity,” Gyatso said.

ICT also called for the repeal of the Ethnic Unity and Progress Law and an end to policies it described as forced assimilation. The organisation alleged that Chinese authorities have interfered in Buddhist institutions, demolished monastic residences and separated Tibetan children from their families through state-run boarding schools.

It further demanded the release of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, whom it said was taken into custody by Chinese authorities more than 31 years ago and has not been publicly seen since. If Beijing does not release him, ICT urged China to allow US officials to meet him independently.

In a separate statement, ICT raised concerns over the alleged use of AI tools in surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations targeting Tibetan organisations and activists.

The organisation cited an Anthropic threat intelligence report covering the misuse of its Claude AI models between December 2025 and August 2026. According to ICT, China-based, government-aligned actors targeted the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibetan Buddhist civil society groups, ICT and Students for a Free Tibet.

ICT said the operators used Claude to process multilingual material and produce Chinese-language intelligence dossiers, organisational datasets and daily reports. The activities allegedly included collecting personal information, monitoring social media and gathering floor plans and structural details of religious venues.

The organisation said Anthropic identified instances in which operators instructed Claude to adopt “China’s standpoint” and portray the Tibetan administration in exile as an “illegal separatist administration”.

ICT also cited a separate operation in which AI was allegedly used to recast foreign media reports critical of China into intelligence briefings for government use.

“Governments and AI companies must ensure that technologies built to expand human knowledge do not become instruments for authoritarian governments to monitor people, intimidate communities and impose their version of history on the digital world,” Gyatso said.

ICT called on AI providers to prevent the use of their systems for political, religious and ethnic profiling, shut down accounts involved in abusive activity and share information about identified threats. It also urged providers to notify targeted individuals and organisations wherever doing so would be safe.

The organisation called on governments, including the US, to investigate the alleged operations and take steps to protect affected Tibetan communities.

ICT also said it had joined 28 other rights organisations in a letter to Xi calling for the release of prisoners of conscience and an end to what the groups described as transnational repression. The letter also sought changes to laws used to criminalise peaceful expression, religious practice and dissent.

Neither of the ICT statements included a response from the Chinese government to the allegations.

With IANS inputs