h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today, 17 May, marks the 10 year anniversary of the abduction of a six-year-old boy by Chinese authorities. 10 years ago, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima became arguably the world's youngest political prisoner when he and his family were arrested and taken away. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has not been seen since.

What made this little boy so threatening to the world's most populous country? He had just been named as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second holiest figure in Tibetan Buddhism after His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

This fact alone might not have landed the six-year-old in prison, even in China, had his identity as the reborn holy man not been confirmed by the Dalai Lama himself. To the minds of China's communist elite this made the little boy a part of the 'Dalai clique', a 'splittist' counter-revolutionary. Whether he is alive and well today is unknown, or known only to those who still hold him captive.

In truly orwellian fashion, the communist state, which officially denies the existence of such superstitious backwardness as re-incarnation, picked its own little boy as the re-incarnation of the Panchen Lama, presumably using a more scientific method than His Holiness the Dalai Lama.