Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday, October 3, 1996

The Guardian - London

3 October 1996

By Isabel Hilton

IT WAS National Day in the People's Republic of China this week, the annual cele-bration of nearly five decades of achievement under the wise leadership of the Communist Party. Nationalism was the theme: thousands of people attended a dawn flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square, and a People's Daily editorial underscored, for those who had missed it, the message of the moment.

"Nationalism... can bring into full play the potential of all nationalities. [It] is the most effective way of cementing the strength of all nation-alities . . . to create great undertakings that will shake heaven and earth," it said. The People's Daily published a front-page colour photograph of the eight-year-old child whom the Chinese govern-ment have imposed upon Tibet as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-highest religious authority. The boy chosen by the Dalal Lama, the Tibetans' spiritual leader, has vanished.

Beijing was trumpeting its achievements, but Tibet is suffering another wave of politi-cal persecution as the govern-ment seeks to prise loose the people's devotion to their ab-sent Dalai Lama. The Chinese say that the late 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989, and his Party-sanctioned reincar-nation are supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese occupation 9f Tibet, while the Dalal Lama is a traitor to Tibet and, even less plausibly, to his religion. The fitting leader for Tibet, the message runs, is therefore the Panchen Lama.

But a document that has remained secret for more than 30 years and which has now come out of China reveals what the late Panchen Lama really thought of the fate of his compatriots under the Chi-nese. It is one of the longest, most detailed and most bitter descriptions ever written about the devastation resulting from Chinese policies.

"In many parts of Tibet," he wrote, "people have starved to death. In some places, whole families have perished and the death rate is very high. This is very abnormal, horrible and grave. In the past, Tibet lived with a dark, barbaric feudal-ism, but there was never such shortage of food." The document is a 70,000-word letter the late Panchen Lama wrote to Chairman Mao in 1962 in a desperate attempt to persuade Mao to modify the policies that threatened to ex-tinguish a people and its culture. "If language, clothes and habits are taken away," he wrote, "then a people will van-is.... How can we guarantee that Tibetans will not be turned into another race?"

The Panchen Lama was born in the north-west prov-ince of Qinghai, as was the present Dalai Lama. After their victory in 1949 the Chi-nese divided Tibet: one third they named the Tibet Autono-mous Region and promised it would enjoy an earlier version of the one country, two sys-tems" style of government that is now promised to Hong Kong. The rest was divided between several Chinese prov-inces, including Qinghai. The Chinese agreed not to "reform" the Tibet Autono-mous Region, but no such restraints applied to the rest.

Qinghai has never recov-ered from what was done to it and its peoples in the 50s: nomads were forcibly settled on the high plateau with its thin soil. The result was mass starvation and desertification. Monasteries were destroyed and the monks and nuns forced out. Rebellion followed, and was savagely put down; thousands died in the Labour camps. It was the time Mao declared that China could catch the West up in 15 years, if only his magic prescriptions were followed. Some in the Communist Party hierarchy grew worried and tried to restrain Mao and reverse his policies. They encouraged the young Panchen lama, until then an admirer of the Chinese leadership, to write ins report, hoping to use it against Mao. After a long investigation, and over the protesting beads of close advisers, the Panchen Lama went ahead.

BUT Mao won the inner party battle and the Panchen Lama paid for his temerity with more than a decade and a half of prison. Even today the Chinese gov-ernment continues to hide the truth about that era: millions throughout China died of star-vation, but for decades it has been blamed on "natural di-saster". And just as today the Beijing leadership claims that Tibet enjoys religious free-dom, they also pretend that Tibet's rich religious culture was decimated in the Cultural Revolution, now pronounced one of Mao's "mistakes", rather than in the late 50s and early 60s. That period has not been judged a "mistake" be-cause that judgment would stand as a condemnation of Deng Xiaoping and the others who share the responsibility for the millions of deaths and broken lives they caused.

The Chinese government claimed that the late Panchen Lama "loved the party", but as the document reveals, alter only a decade of Chinese rule, the Panchen lama was bit-terly disillusioned. It is more than 30 years since his report. Tibetans are still being ar-rested, tortured and perse-cuted for their beliefs. And in Beijing, the band plays on.