Surviving Tibet

In the night between the 16th and the 17th of March 1959, Tenzin Gyatso, the current 14th Dalai Lama dressed up in soldier was fleeing Lhassa, a shotgun on the shoulder. Welcomed by Nehru in India, his exile in Dharamsala is still going on today.
This month of March 1959 the Chinese repression of the Tibetan insurrection made 87000 dead. Fourty years later, the commemoration of this event ended up in a blood bath and saw the appliance of the martial law during one year in Tibet. Since the Chinese invasion in 1949, 1,2 millions of Tibetans have died. This drama has even been called genocide by the International Commission of Lawyers in his rapport of 1959.
At the same time the occupier spreads terror within the population and applies a policy that aims at imposing the Chinese traditions in this territory. The Tibetans are now in minority on their land, because of the settlement of more than 7 millions of Chinese colons. Moreover, Tibetan women are submitted to a strict control of the births, which leads to sterilisation or abortion after the first child, whereas the colons are not submitted to these rules. Alcohol and drugs are wasting the poor population excluded from the model imposed by Beijing. The culture of the “country of the snows” is also the target of a terrible oppression: the Buddhist rites are strictly supervised and it is forbidden to pray the Dalai Lama. Owning a picture of the spiritual leader can be liable for jail. The Maoist cultural revolution in 1966 has caused wastes, because 6000 temples or monasteries have been destroyed. One hundred remain for tourism. The gathering in favour of the independence are prohibited and we can count 1000 Tibetan political prisoners, of which 300 women and 40 under 18. They are often tortured for having simply said “Free Tibet” or were involved in demonstrations. On the environmental level, the Chinese presence has had huge consequences: deforestation and massive anarchic mineral extraction have unbalanced a rich and intact eco-system before 1949. This territory is even used by Beijing to bury radioactive trashes.
This dramatic situation has caused a massive exodus. We can count 130000 official refugees throughout the world (100000 in India and more than 100 in France), but some experts say the number of 200000. This diaspora is particularly important, if we consider the risk of fleeing Tibet across high mountains with Chinese border guards who do not hesitate to shoot on exhausted climbers. Since 1949 the Dalai Lama leads a pacific fight of all instants, which has been rewarded by the Nobel Prize of Peace in 1989. Unfortunately, even if he has visited all the important people of the world, he can not compete with the economic power of the Chinese giant. This renders the international community to be accommodating with Beijing. Tibetans will have to suffer again before being able not to feel stranger in their country.