My friend Tenzin Choeying of SFT India is one of the Tibetan exile community’s sharpest organizers in India. He is quoted in an AFP story on the debate that is are currently underway in the Tibet movement about how it needs to respond to Chinese obstructionism.

He still commands vast respect and almost total loyalty, but many Tibetans — including the Dalai Lama himself — acknowledge that their freedom movement must learn to stand on its own.

“We have been relying on him for so long,” said Tenzin Choeying, national director of Students For a Free Tibet.

“The Chinese are just waiting for His Holiness to die because they think that will be the end of the Tibetan movement,” Choeying said.

“We must not fall prey to the same assumption … It is time for the Tibetan community to take responsibility for its future.”

China’s policy of stalling all negotiations towards progress with Tibet is premised on the belief that once the Dalai Lama passes away, so too will the cause of Tibet. They are counting on a leadership vacuum and demoralizing the Tibetan people both inside and outside of Tibet. They are counting on the world not caring once Tibet’s charismatic leader is dead. Choeying’s framing of the current situation is both the process that needs to happen to ensure that this movement doesn’t lose force and that process happening in itself. This kind of leadership is critical.