A Short History of Modern Tibet

In 1949, Mao Zedong’s newly-founded “People’s” Republic began to claim Tibet as an integral part of its territory. In October 1950 the Chinese army entered Khan, a Western Tibetan province, and infiltrated its troops into Amdo, a North-Eastern region.

In November 1950, the Dalai Lama, then fifteen years old, took over the temporal and spiritual leadership of Tibet. In May 1951, he sent a delegation to Beijing to begin negotiations with the Chinese invaders. The result of this meeting was that the Tibetan representatives were forced, as most of eastern Tibet and parts of the west were already occupied by the Chinese, to sign the Chinese government’s so-called "Seventeen-Point Plan for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet." This "Plan" proclaimed Chinese sovereignty over Tibet while guaranteeing Tibet the right to maintain its political and economic systems. The essential role of the Dalai Lama was also recognized, as was freedom of religion.

In the following years, the Chinese government repeatedly violated the articles of the treaty, transforming Tibet into one of its colonies. Between 1954 and 1959, in the Eastern regions of Tibet and especially in the Kham region, the resistance movements arose, which were quickly crushed by the Chinese government through a series of violent repressions.

In 1959 the government of Mao Zedong took an extremist turn. This caused the Tibetan population to protest in defence of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Due to insistent voices that the Chinese government had intentions to kidnap him, the Dalai Lama was forced to escape to India.

Soon the situation in Tibet worsened. The Chinese government reacted with an increasing violence previously unknown to the Tibetan people. State atheism was enforced and thousands of men, women and children were massacred or imprisoned; thousands of temples and monasteries were destroyed by bombardments or were converted into barns and warehouses.

Tibetans were shocked and traumatized by this "Chinesation," which led to the prohibition of owning a photo of Dalai Lama, the compulsory study of the Chinese language, indoctrination to Maoist thought, and the obligatory participation of all able individuals in work brigades and units of production. An incredible portion of the national architectural and artistic treasures were destroyed, and the Tibetan intellectual class was eradicated.

Tens of thousands of refugees began to flee, crossing the Himalayas to India, Bhutan and Nepal.

In 1962 China launched an attack against India’s northern borders from Tibet, and established nuclear missile bases in the Tibetan desert.

Between 1959 and 1965 several deliberations of the U.N. General Assembly were held in order to encourage China to recognize Tibet’s right to self-determination and human rights.

In reply, China renamed Tibet "Xizang Autonomous Region" in 1965, and annexed wide areas inhabited by Tibetan populations to the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Ch’ing-hai.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution reached Tibet. The notorious Red Guards completed the destruction that had already begun. Lhasa was carpeted with red flags and portraits of Mao. They renamed streets and squares, further destroying Tibetan monasteries and cultural and religious institutions. Trials, searches, and re-education sessions were instituted; monks and dissidents were jailed and tortured. It is estimated that these measures caused the death of over 1.2 million Tibetans (approximately one fifth of the population).

Even after the slight liberalization which occurred following Mao’s death in 1976, the imposed Chinesation of the country continued.

In 1979 Deng Xiao Ping urged the Dalai Lama to send his brother to visit Tibet with the apparent intent of letting him see for himself that conditions in Tibet had improved, but the real reason was to convince the Dalai Lama to return to his country – on the condition that he renounce any demands for independence. Manifestations – first of joy, then of rebellion – accompanied this visit, together with the sadly customary military repressions.

During the 1980’s, the government of Beijing began mass waves of immigration of ethnic Chinese into Tibet. In Tibetan the ratio between Chinese and Tibetan inhabitants has decreased to two or three ethnic Chinese to one ethnic Tibetan. This extended Chinese power, not only politically and economically, but also in the religious and cultural life of the Tibetan people. Today Chinese is the official language of Tibet, while Tibetan has been reduced to a dialect. Without apparent irony, the Communist regime has even granted itself the right to consecrate the reincarnations of Lamas.

Protests against the Chinese government continued in Tibet. Large-scale demonstrations against the Chinese occupation took place in 1987 and 1989. Hu Jintao, who was then leader of the Communist party in Lhasa declared martial law and ordered the massacre of demonstrators. He is now president of the China, Communist party chief and head of China's Central Military Commission.

In the following years the Dalai Lama, from the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, India, promoted a long series of proposals and meetings to the Chinese government, seeking some small opening in their rigid political regime. Some of these were: a Five-Point Peace Plan which was presented at the U.S. Congress in September 1987, a Framework for Negotiation with the Chinese government presented in June 1988 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, an appeal launched in October 1991 during a speech at Yale University in order to gather international support public for permission to make a short visit to Tibet.

To continue would just be repetitive: the answer of the Chinese government has always been "No."

The Chinese government is continuing to kill, arrest and torture the Tibetan population.

Maybe now the time has finally come to put an end to what the Dalai Lama defined as "the cultural genocide of the Tibetan people."

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