Tibet Revolts Against Chinese Rule
FITCH, GERALDINE
By Geraldine Fitch TIBET REVOLTS AGAINST CHINESE RULE Taipei REMOTE, nearly inaccessible Tibet has been, for more than two years, the scene of a widespread uprising against Chinese Communist...
...Thousands of Tibetan boys and girls have been shipped off to China for "re-education...
...Chinese troops patrol that entire area...
...Noel Barber and Ralph Izzard, traveled for more than two weeks through Himalayan passes to interGeRaldine Fitch, who has lived and travelled in the Far East since 1952, is the author of Formosa Beachhead...
...but a food coupon, even if honored, provides a Tibetan with only one-fifth of what he ate before the Chinese invasion...
...While the Goloks were cutting that highway, the Khambas were destroying bridges on the highway running north from Tibet into Sikang...
...And—most astounding of all—the "socialization" of Tibet has been postponed for six years...
...Famed horsemen among them have given the Chinese no end of trouble...
...In another attempt to regiment Tibetan life, the Chinese organized in the Kham area, as they did throughout the country, village political councils known as the Mimang Tsongdu...
...General Wangdue described something of the Chinese terror—the bombing of monasteries, the murder of monks, rape...
...The Chinese officials instituted food-rationing...
...The guerrillas claim they have killed 50.000 Chinese soldiers in the past year alone, and they also admit that 22,000 of their own freedom-fighters have been killed...
...The Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950...
...40,000 guerrillas of another tribe, the Goloks, have raided and severed the east-west arterial highway connecting Tibet and China and have driven out most of the Chinese from their area...
...No doubt many of them were deported from China as "dissidents," including a labor force of 420,000 women to work on the roads...
...The Chinese occupation has brought the food situation to a critical point...
...Great numbers of villages and towns have been left without a Tibetan in them...
...The fiercest opposition comes from the Khamba tribe, in the Kham area of northeastern Tibet...
...When the famous Lithang Gonchen Monastery, founded by the third Dalai Lama, was razed, its 80-year-old abbot and four other priests were killed, and the massive statue of Buddha was sprayed by tommy-gun bullets...
...Buddhist images have been desecrated and Tibetan books burned...
...The Khambas are devout Buddhists, very loyal to the Dalai Lama and extremely militant...
...Eight monasteries were deliberately destroyed by bombing...
...Communist China now has 750,-000 troops in Tibet, nearly half of them brought in during 1957 because of the resistance...
...we are now in desperate economic trouble...
...Every town of any size has a "police army" of 3.000...
...Tibet's total population is a sparse one million, but across its borders in China's Sikang, Chinghai, Kansu and Sinkiang provinces there are some 3.5 million Tibetans who are far from subdued...
...The answer is provided by intense Chinese activities along the country's southern borders...
...The Reds have looted all our ancient granaries, where for centuries we have stored grain against famine years...
...In addition to the soldiers...
...Four of our most important lamas," he said, "are now in prison or, for all we know, dead...
...What is clearly revealed in them is that Peking has made serious concessions to the Tibetans, more than to any other province of China...
...view a famous resistance leader, General Tobgye Wangdue, known as "The Powerful Subduer," who commands more than 20,000 armed guerrillas...
...They are Kothok Sithu, Dho Trupchen, Zogchen Premarigzing and Shakeldon Gyatsho...
...The Chinese Communist regime cannot withdraw from Tibet, in short, because Tibet serves as a springboard southward to India...
...women, for the most part, have been killed...
...They had powerful traditional reasons for fighting the Chinese encroachment: (1) Because of ancient conquests by the Hans, the Tibetans have no love for Chinese of any political coloration...
...The Chinese have Guerilla tribesmen weaken Communist hold on 'Roof of the World seven airfields in the country and have built six major highways, three leading from China into Tibet, and three pointing toward India's frontiers...
...In fact, there are more Tibetans outside their own country than inside...
...2) the upper strata of Tibetan monks have traditionally wielded both religious and political power, and they could only have antipathy toward a Communist regime that deprived them of that power...
...Scores of reports published in the official Communist daily, Tibet Jih-Pao, indirectly confirm the existence of widespread resistance and revolt...
...This is a wild gorge about the size of Burma...
...Aside from the guerrillas, 17,000 other Tibetans have been killed in Chinese bombing raids...
...From the very beginning, the Tibetans resisted fiercely...
...The ruthless Chinese occupation only stimulated further resistance...
...Schools have been established to train fifth columnists who are to operate in Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan just across the border...
...China is clearly intent upon completely subduing Tibet...
...Sporadic, fragmentary reports of the revolt filtered down through the Himalayan passes to the Indian border, but they were largely disregarded...
...The Chinese have taken over whole villages, simply turning the Tibetans out of their homes and taking over their grazing grounds and garden plots...
...At one stage of the occupation, the Chinese, in a vain attempt to substantiate their claim that there is no rebellion in Tibet, announced the incorporation of this area into the western Szechuan region of China...
...All students and government personnel (even office boys) have been exempted from forced labor corvees...
...It is now possible to piece together an overall picture of the great uprising, carried on chiefly by the Khamba tribe of northeast Tibet, but also by other Tibetans inside and outside their country...
...Three southbound highways have been built pointing in the direction of Tibet's southern border, veering close to Nepal, Sikkim and Kashmir...
...The story he told them has been making headlines in London and Hong Kong...
...This war that nobody hears about is a no-prisoner war...
...But the Khambas infiltrated these councils and use them as instruments of their resistance movement...
...4.5 million Chinese have been moved into the country as colonizers...
...By Geraldine Fitch TIBET REVOLTS AGAINST CHINESE RULE Taipei REMOTE, nearly inaccessible Tibet has been, for more than two years, the scene of a widespread uprising against Chinese Communist rule...
...Up in Chinghai and Kansu provinces of China there are other Tibetans, of the Amdu tribe, who have also staged many revolts...
...and the men have taken to the hills and joined the guerrillas...
...But in view of the extraordinary Tibetan resistance, one wonders why China cannot cut its losses and withdraw from the country...
...As a result, food prices are 20 times higher than they were seven years ago...
...But the reports, coming from widely separated places and at intervals of months, persisted and were in basic agreement...
...These are reports of speeches and resolutions at meetings of the "Tibet Autonomous Preparatory Committee" and of the Tibetan Young Communist League work committees...
...3) all Tibetans have a fierce, primitive passion for independence, and conquest from any source would be bitter medicine...
...Quite recently, two British reporters...
...The number of Chinese Communist party cadres in Tibet has been reduced, most of them being returned to China...
...General Wangdue said, "We used to be self-sufficient in foodstuffs, but with five million Chinese living on us...
Vol. 42 • March 1959 • No. 10
