(TibetanReview.net, Oct15’26) – Visiting the Czech capital Prague for the 30th Forum 2000 Conference (Oct 11-13), Sikyong Penpa Tsering, the executive head of the Central Tibetan Administration, met with lawmakers and other leaders from several countries as well as top Czech government and parliamentary leaders. He briefed them as well as the international media about the issue of Tibet and the latest situation in the Himalayan territory that has remained under Chinese occupation rule over the past more than seven decades.
In the morning of Oct 12, ahead of attending the Forum on its second day, being held at the Prague Congress Centre, the Tibetan Sikyong held bilateral discussions with lawmakers from a number of countries and separate meetings with Roderich Kiesewetter, Member of the German Bundestag, and Yuya Mineshima, Member of the Japan’s National Diet.
Other political leaders he met with included Ana Helena Chacón, former Vice President of Costa Rica and prominent human rights advocate, and Alexandr Vondra, Member of the European Parliament.
Besides, he also held sideline discussions with Jamie Fly, President and CEO of Freedom House; Robert Řehák, Ambassador at Large, Special Envoy, and Chair of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA); Kim Aris, British campaigner and son of currently detained Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi; Manny Caintic, Filipino IT executive and former government official; and Dr Jagannath Panda, Head of the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs.
Later in the afternoon, the Tibetan Sikyong was a keynote panelist at the Václav Havel Hall in a discussion on “When Faith Becomes Political: Defending Freedom in an Age of Authoritarianism,” which was organised in cooperation with the Community of Democracies, an intergovernmental coalition of states founded in 2000 in Warsaw, Poland, and dedicated to promoting, defending, and strengthening democracy worldwide. The discussion was moderated by Mantas Adomėnas, Secretary General of the Community of Democracies, with the panel also featuring Grace Davie, Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter, a research university in the West Country of England, and His Beatitude Epiphanius I of Ukraine.
In the afternoon of the following day, the Tibetan Sikyong visited the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic at Wallenstein Palace (Valdštejnský palác) for a dedicated parliamentary meeting with Czech lawmakers. The parliamentarians were led by Senator Jiří Oberfalzer, Vice-President of the Senate, alongside Senator Jiří Růžička, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Petitions; committee members Senator Přemysl Rabas and Senator Břetislav Rychlík; and Deputy Hayato Okamura, Member of the Committee on Human Rights and Petitions in the Chamber of Deputies. Jana Navrátilová from the Senate Chancellery’s International Relations Department, also attended the meeting.
The Czech parliamentarians reaffirmed their cross-party support for Tibet and expressed keen interest to explore a dedicated public hearing next year featuring direct witness testimony on Beijing’s human rights violations, assimilation measures, and transnational reach.
Earlier in the day, Sikyong Penpa Tsering held an informal interaction with Daniel Štech, Director of the Foreign Affairs Department at the Office of the President of the Czech Republic.
He also held a bilateral discussion at the Prague Congress Centre with Ivone Soares, Deputy Leader of the Mozambican National Resistance and Member of the Assembly of the Republic of Mozambique.
His media interviews on Oct 12 and 13 included those with Dana Zlatohlávková of Czech Television (Česká televize), the nation’s public broadcaster; Milan Kajínek of The Epoch Times; Noemi Fingerlandová of Czech Radio; Daniela Kučerová from Seznam Zprávy, one of the Czech Republic’s major media houses; Magdalena Slezáková from Deník N, one of the Czech Republic’s leading independent daily newspapers.
The Tibetan Sikyong also met with an Iranian delegation made up of civil society leaders, human rights advocates, and academics and which included Negin Shiraghaei, Nikahang “Nik” Kowsar, Shukriya M. Bradost, Ammar Maleki, Aram Hessami, Mehdi Yahyanejad, Neda Soltani, Abdolreza Ahmadi, Evan Alireza Firoozi, and Ahmad Khalid Majidyar.
(Based on three Tibet.net reports Oct 14-15, 2026)