Dalai Lama grandniece joins Party

A GRANDNIECE of the 14th Dalai Lama said yesterday that she had joined the Communist Party of China.

"I'm proud to join the CPC," said Deying Drolma, 35, grandniece of the Dalai Lama and now a soldier of the People's Liberation Army. She took her oath to be a member of the CPC on June 26.

"My grandmother Khyi Losel is a cousin of the Dalai Lama. When he fled to India in 1959, he asked her and her family to go with him but she refused. She told us we shall never betray our motherland," said Deying Drolma.

Deying Drolma wrote her first two applications to join the CPC in 1995 and 1998, but didn't submit them out of concerns of her "special relationship" with the Dalai Lama, she said.

"Last year and this year, I filed two more applications to the Party as I felt myself a qualified candidate."

Deying Drolma joined the PLA after she graduated from high school in December 1993.

"When I was a child, I often saw PLA doctors who traveled a lot and underwent great difficulties to relieve herdsmen in Tibet from diseases," said Deying Drolma. "I wanted to be a PLA soldier ever since."

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