The years from 1966 to 1979 represent, for the Tibetans, the cruelest period of Chinese occupation. As the Dalai Lama lamented, Tibetan identity was attacked even down to its language. Experts created a “Sino-Tibetan language of friendship” that distorted Tibetan language with Chinese expressions.
Five hundred Tibetans perished while fleeing their occupied country
THE COMMEMORATION ON MARCH 10 has become sacred for all Tibetans, and it is an important date in the historic struggle of our people, who want to free themselves from their oppressors. It was on this day that the Tibetans courageously tried to free themselves from the yoke of Chinese leaders. In 1950 the Chinese occupied our country by force, exercising an ambiguous, obsolete claim of suzerainty. Compared to the superiority of the Chinese forces, our resistance was condemned in advance, and it led to a large-scale massacre of thousands of our fellow citizens. But the spirit of a people that believes in human dignity and in the freedom of all nations, large and small, cannot let itself be broken by an aggressor, however powerful. On that fatal day, our entire country joined together to defy the Chinese, and we reasserted our national identity in clear terms for the outside world. Our people’s struggle is continuing today both inside and outside Tibet.
For our compatriots who have remained in Tibet, the battle is both a physical and a moral one. The Chinese have used every trick possible, along with force, to break the Tibetans’ resistance. The fact that they have not succeeded is admitted by China and attested to by the many Tibetans who flee to India and other neighboring countries each year, despite increasingly severe controls imposed by the Chinese Communists at the borders.
In 1968, almost five hundred Tibetans perished as they were trying to flee to India. They knew that their chances of success were almost nonexistent, and yet they preferred to take this risk. Is it conceivable that a people can reach such suicidal extremes when it is supposedly satisfied with the regime it is living under, according to the Chinese Communists?
During each of the years that have gone by, the Chinese have successively tried to indoctrinate thousands of Tibetan children, forcibly separating them from their parents and sending them to China. In that country, they have been kept away from all Tibetan culture, taught the doctrines of Mao, and forced to mock and ridicule the Tibetan way of life. But contrary to Chinese expectations, a large majority of them are now resisting the regime forcibly imposed on Tibet. So long as human beings have the ability to think, and so long as they seek the truth, the Chinese Communists will not completely succeed at indoctrinating our children. There is no doubt that the fate reserved for annexed ethnic minorities attests to Han chauvinism. However, far from managing to reach their goals, the Chinese are only feeding the nationalist flame. It is for this reason that even young Tibetan Communists have joined forces with the rest of the country against the Chinese.
The culture and religious beliefs of our country have been one of the main targets of Communist repression. The destruction of monastic universities, cultural centers, and other similar institutions begun in the beginning of the Chinese conquest has recently intensified with the Cultural Revolution and the founding of the Red Guard. Monks, nuns, and scholars have been expelled from monasteries and cultural institutions. Large numbers of the local population are being forced to build an immense network of strategic roads in Tibet, which has become a huge military base at the borders of neighboring countries. This poses a growing threat to the peace of these regions.
It has been up to those of us who were lucky enough to flee the Chinese Communists to take up the noble task for which so many of our compatriots have given their lives. Our people in exile are conscientiously trying to prepare for the day we can return to a Free Tibet. Thus, Tibetan children, whom I regard as the cornerstone of a future free, independent Tibet, are receiving the best chances possible to develop and grow mentally and morally to become men and women profoundly rooted in their own culture, beliefs, and way of life, while still remaining close to modern civilization and enriched by the greatest accomplishments of world culture. They will thus be healthy, creative Tibetan citizens, capable of serving our nation and humanity. Our wish is not only to be able to contribute to the prosperity of our host country but also to act in such a way that an authentically Tibetan culture can take root and flourish outside of Tibet, until we are able to return there. Returning one day is a hope that will always accompany us, and an aim toward which we must ceaselessly work.21
The ability of Tibetans to escape their situation, as mentioned by the Dalai Lama on March 10, 1968, has scarcely changed today. The events of September 2006 were a tragic reminder of this: Chinese border guards attacked a column of seventy-five Tibetans trying to reach Nepal by the Nangpa La Pass, 5,700 meters high, at the foot of Mount Cho Oyu.
The patrol aimed and shot at sight in a snow field. Kelsang Namtso, a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun, collapsed, pierced with bullets. Her companions were unable to carry her body, for fear of being arrested. The next day a few soldiers returned and threw the body into a crevasse, under the eyes of some Danish mountain climbers.
During the fusillade, a twenty-year-old man, Kunsang Namgyal, was wounded and made prisoner along with thirty other Tibetans, including fourteen children who lost their lives.
The incident had witnesses: from their base camp, mountain climbers of different nationalities filmed the soldiers shooting, then pursuing and arresting the people fleeing. The images
