Tibet

Tibet: Lost country of the world

Once identified with Shangri-La, a mythical place of peace and contentment (Tibet) is now a dark and sorrowing land, writes Harrison E. Salisbury in The New York Times

"Discriminated against at every turn, Tibetans are condemned to be second-class citizens, living in shame in their own country, and it is very difficult for them to see the Chinese policy towards them as anything but one of apartheid and out-and-out racism"(Wangyal)

The entry of Chinese Communist forces Into Tibet over forty year ago was the first step in a campaign of outright assault on an independent peace-loving people, which continues unabated to this day. Under the slogan of liberation the Tibetan people and their entire way of life have been attacked.

On October 1 1949, Mao Tse-tung proclaimed a People's Republic of China. As the new Chinese Communist regime set about expanding and consolidating its power, it quietly swallowed up the disputed outlaying territories of its western neighbors, Tibet. Then on October 7 1950, almost a year after that, 30,000 battle-hardened, self-confident troops of the People's Liberation Army Invaded the heartland of Tibet(T.O.B)

In the first twenty years of Chinese occupation, 1.2 million Tibetans - one fifth of the total population- are believed to have died, either by starvation (unknown before Chinese came and changed the traditional agriculture practices), execution, Imprisonment, torture or in conflicts. Tibetans has been described as "a laboratory for torture techniques for the Chinese security forces". Thousands of Tibetans, including their leader, the Dalai Lama, were driven Into exile. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 plumbed incomparable depth of savagery in Tibet and brought Tibetans culture and religion to the brink of destruction. "The holocaust that happened in Tibet". said Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "revealed Communist China as a cruel and inhumane executioner- more brutal and inhuman than any other Communist regime in the world".

Only in the early Eighties did a brief taste of liberalization bring the hope of better things. But the hope had already turned sour by 1983, when Tibet began to be flooded with Chinese immigrants, and the indigenous inhabitants were outnumbered. Tibetan cities became indistinguishable from the Chinese counterparts. Tibetans found themselves second-class citizens with a second-class language, discriminated against in their own land. They had no legal representation, no freedom of speech, no permitted outlet for discontent. New buildings were for the benefits of Chinese immigrants. In the Tibetan areas towns, there was no running water or basic sewerage, and only rarely electricity. And outside the towns, there was little food. (T.O.B)

Since then, Tibetan people have been humiliated and impoverished in their own land. Many thousands have been imprisoned, tortured and subjected to every indignity. "Human rights violations In Tibet are amongst the most serious in the world "(Dalai Lama)"

With the destruction of the several thousand monasteries and nunneries and the expulsion of the monks and nuns, not only the cultural and religious values of Tibet were attached but also the traditional education was targeted. "At that time all the monasteries were destroyed. The whole country was changing during the revolution. The wave of change was unstoppable," says Dondrup, a 77-year-old monk at the Pel Kor Monastery in Gyantse. Nowadays, young people come out of Tibet unable to read or write their own language and so are cut off from their natural heritage(bbc)

The Chinese disregard for the Tibetan people has been compounded by the insidious policy of population transfer. As huge number of Chinese settlers are added to the already substantial occupying forces, the threat of Tibetan becoming a minority in their country is very real. Even now, poorly educated, unemployed and denied basic human rights, they are treated as second-class citizens (Tibet Awareness).The recent influx of Chinese settlers is linked by most people to the economic reform drive initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the spring of 1992, and in fact the numbers of migrants in Lhasa do seem to have increased markedly after that date (Tibet Information Network TIN, Tibetan Views of Immigration into Central Tibet 1992-93, 1993).

The Chinese establishes factories in Tibet making cement, leather, woolen fabrics, textiles, dairy products- the Chinese held all the top jobs and all the low-paid, heavy, dirty jobs were being reserved for Tibetans. The produce was labeled “Made in China” and was destined for China, or for sale in Nepal and Hong Kong. There was electricity, but for the Chinese sectors only; roads, but mainly for the military, affording them an essential means of keeping control; vehicles, mostly heavy trucks belonging to Chinese government; consumer goods, which the Tibetans could not conceivably afford.

A 2000-year old civilization had been bought to the brink of destruction to promote China’s unchanging goals: to transform the region into a military bastion dominating Central Asia; to exploit its vast mineral, animal, and forest reserves; and to remold the Tibetan people in their own image and likeliness. Tibet is now China’s largest Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile Base. According to a Reuter report in the Times of India (08.25.82) Tibet’s Communist Party supremo, Yin Fa-tang, claimed that the biggest reserves of uranium in the world were locked inside the mountain of Tibet, along with untold quantities of borax and iron ore.(Hindu)

On the medical front, large number of Tibetans were suffering from spinal and kidney ailments, the results of working over-long hours in the fields, poorly clad and in all weathers. They suffered from malnutrition; from heart and lungs complaints unknown before the advent of the Chinese. Yet there were scarcely any trained doctors and rural Tibetans had to rely on ill-equipped ”barefoot” doctors whose incompetence was a danger to life. Hospitals had been built, but they were discriminated there as