March 10, 2018 was the 59th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising. But thanks to Senate Resolution 429, which passed a few weeks later, the Senate recognized it as Tibetan Rights Day.
As part of the resolution, the Senate expressed its sense that the “identification and installation of Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders, including a future 15th Dalai Lama, is a matter that should be determined solely within the Tibetan Buddhist faith community, in accordance with the inalienable right to religious freedom.” And that “any attempt by the Government of the People’s Republic of China to identify or install its own candidate as a Tibetan Buddhist religious leader, including a future 15th Dalai Lama, is invalid interference in the right to religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists around the world, including in Tibet as well as the United States and elsewhere.”