
Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Norberto Paredes*
- Author's title, BBC News World
For almost 40 years, Tibet enjoyed de facto independence, but the victory of the communists in China in 1949 ended this parenthesis in the history of this convulsed Himalayan region.
On October 7, 1950 thousand troops sent by Mao Zedong, they entered Tibet, cornered their authorities and finally took the border city of Chamdo on October 19.
Under pressure from China, Dalai Lama, a Tibetan leader, signed the controversial agreement of the 17 points after eight months of occupation by the Chinese army, a document that officialized the annexation of the territory.
But according to the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and Nobel Peace Prize, the treaty is invalid because it was “forced on a homeless government that did not want to do it.” The Dalai Lama was barely 15 years old when he signed it.
Beijing refers to this episode of Tibetan history as a “peaceful liberation”, while exiled tibetans describe it as invasion.
Anyway, then the most recent stage of a historical conflict began and around which this week tensions were revived, after the announcement of the Dalai Lama that he will have a successor and that only the institution he directs – not Beijing – can name it.
And it is that the autonomous region of Tibet – located in the north of the Himalayan mountain range – is a territory of 1.2 million km2, remote and with a story full of turbulence.
Its annexation to China, signed on May 23, 1951, is for most Tibetans a tragic date that left many open wounds and a great popular discontent.
With the Chinese occupation, tibet tibet began, which gradually intensified in 1956, until March 10, 1959 began the first great rebellion of the Tibetan people in rejection of Chinese domain, a popular survey that left tens of thousands of dead.
After the intervention of the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL) of China and almost two weeks of violent clashes, the Chinese victory – whose army was much more numerous – forced the Dalái Lama to flee the country and exile into India.
The Chinese “Treasury”
After the taking of Chamdo in October 1950 by the then newly formed communist government, the city has been considered by Beijing as the “First Line” of combat in the “Political Fight against Separatism”, according to the independent specialist Kate Saunders, an expert in Tibet and China.
“In 1949, the communist forces had already entered the areas of the East (Kham) and the Northeast (AMDO) of Tibet, which were under the military occupation of the regimes supported by the nationalists of the Kuomintang. The late British radio operator Robert Ford, which was captured and imprisoned by the Chinese forces, wrote that the Tibetan defense forces fought until the end, but they were annihilated, Saunders explained to BBC Mundo in 2020, when 70 years of the occupation were completed.
The British journalist said that Tibet's taking was one of Mao's objectives since he assumed power, since it is a region with a strategic location and is considered the “southwest border of the homeland.”
Image source, Getty Images
“Known as the 'Treasury' in Chinese, Tibet is rich in natural and mineral resources, such as lithium, uranium and another particularly important: water,” he added.
The Tibet is also the highest and most extensive plateau in the world and the source of most of the main rivers of Asia, so it would be crucial for China in case of water shortage.
How did this conflict originate?
The Tibet was part of the Mongol Empire since the thirteenth century and since its conquest almost always enjoyed considerable autonomy.
In the 1850s, the Russian and British rivalry for the control of Central Asia leads the Tibetan government to prohibit all foreigners and close the borders, but in 1865 Great Britain began to discreetly map the territory.
In 1904, Dalái Lama fled from a British military expedition led by Colonel Francis Younghusband. Subsequently, the United Kingdom forced Tibet to sign a commercial agreement to prevent any Russian proposal.
Image source, Getty Images
And two years later, with the signing of the Convention between Great Britain and China, the British promised not to annex or interfere in the Tibet in exchange for compensation of the Chinese government.
The treaty reaffirmed the Chinese possession of the territory.
Between 1908 and 1909, China restored Dalai Lama, but he fled to India when Beijing sent an army in order to control his government.
Finally, in April 1912, after the fall of the monarchy and the declaration of the Chinese Republic, the Chinese garrison surrendered to the Tibetan authorities. Then, the thirteenth Dalai Lama returned from India and the Chinese troops left.
The government in exile ensures that China recognized the de facto independence of the region in 1913, while China says that it always had sovereignty about Tibet but that it temporarily could not exercise it.
The destruction of local culture
While it is not a nation state in the modern sense, Tibet has maintained a culture, a written and spoken language, a unique religion and political system in the world for centuries.
“He signed international treaties and maintained diplomatic relations with neighboring countries. In 1912, the thirteenth Dalai Lama issued an proclamation reaffirming the independence of the Tibet and the country maintained its own national flag, the Lion of the Snow, its currency, its stamps, its passports and its army,” says Saunders.
Image source, Getty Images
Over the years, any form of protest in the Tibet against Beijing has been strongly repressed. The Dalai Lama says that about 1.2 million people have died in the region during the Chinese domain. But the Chinese authorities deny it.
Several independent evaluations doubt that high number of deaths, but still place the figure between 200,000 and 800,000.
In recent decades there have been protests within the Tibet in rejection of the destruction of local culture and the treatment of the Tibetan people by the Chinese authorities. During the Cultural Revolution of China in the 1960s and 1970s, most local monasteries were destroyed.
China has recognized abuse during the cultural revolution and says that the Communist Party has been leading a Renaissance of culture in Tibet since 1980, restoring damaged monasteries.
The government in exile says that it is a measure that only seeks to increase tourism.
Similarly, many Tibetans have been arrested and the NGO Amnesty International has reported numerous cases of torture and murders.
And a report published in 2020 by the Jamestown Foundation argues that China is forcing hundreds of thousands of people in the Tibet to enter military -style training centers that, according to experts, are similar to work fields.
Image source, Getty Images
“Before the massive internment of Uigures (Muslims) in Xinjiang, the Tibet was used as a laboratory to test dystopian total surveillance measures, an accelerated cultural assimilation system in order to create citizens and subjects obedient to the party,” says the expert at Tibet Kate Saunders.
Succession problems
This week, the current Dalai Lama decided to play a very sensitive theme: his succession.
When confirming that he will have a successor, the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has been exiled in India since 1959, ended the speculations about whether the institution he heads, 600 years old, was going to disappear after his death.
In a video released this Thursday, he affirmed that only the organization he founded could name a successor and that “no one else has authority to interfere with this matter.”
According to the Tibetan tradition, the Dalai Lama “reincarnate” after his death.
Of course this generated the response of China, which rejected the statement stating that the successor of Dalai Lama would come from China and that it should be approved by the Government.
A spokesman from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must comply with Chinese regulations and laws, in addition to “religious considerations”, to receive the approval of Beijing.
This again evidences that the Tibet question faces the right of a people to self -determination and legitimacy of a multiethnic state, such as China, to maintain what it considers as its territorial integrity.
Currently, from exile, the Dalai Lama advocates finding an intermediate point with Beijing, and claims to settle for substantial autonomy within China.
But the younger generations of nationalists in Tibet, and especially abroad, press to obtain total independence, a scenario that seems more and more distant.
*This note was originally posted in October 2020 and was updated on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Dalai Lama.