Posted: Mar 10, 2009 02:51 am EDT
(MountEverest.net) Today March 10, 2009, marks the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day.

Courtesy of the Longriders Guild in UK, ExplorersWeb have obtained permission to publish an unique report written for this day by an explorer/journalist who was there.

Close to ninety years old now, son of a Scottish minister George Patterson became involved with the Tibetan resistance to the invading Chinese Communist army in the winter of 1949, when he rode to India to deliver a plea for help from Tibet to the outside world. Here is his story.

Tibet's Fiftieth Anniversary of China's Genocide
By George Patterson

On March 10th tens of thousands of Tibetans outside Tibet will demonstrate against their country’s rape and genocide by China. The five million Tibetans still inside their country will be unable to do so because any celebrations will be suppressed by the six million Han Chinese who have illegally annexed and occupied their territory.

I was there before, during and after it happened and here is my personal account of China’s genocide of Tibet.

In 1950 I had been living as a medical missionary among the warlike Khambas of East Tibet who at the time had been preparing to revolt against the central government. I was especially friendly with the two leaders preparing for the revolt, Topgyay and Rapga Pangdatshang.

Topgyay was the charismatic “Braveheart” leader, and Rapga the scholar who had translated the works of Karl Marx and Dr Sun Yat Sen into Tibetan, and both had led an aborted revolt against the central government in the 1930s, fled to India, and had returned to take advantage of China’s disruption by the Communist military takeover of China.

Across Tibet in mid-winter

In anticipation of the pending revolt, and possible fighting with the Chinese, I was short of medicines from China, and was making plans to travel a thousand miles of unexplored Tibetan territory to India for medical supplies, and to return within six months before the Chinese launched an attack against Tibet.

The Tibetan leaders reckoned they had sufficient weapons for their internal revolt, but not nearly enough for any subsequent fighting with China, and they asked me to get weapons as well as medicines while I was in India.

I reached Calcutta in India within three months after a horrendous cross-country journey across southern Tibet in mid-winter. With no contacts, and no experience whatever of political or diplomatic practices, I still managed to meet with British, American and Indian politicians and diplomats – and intelligence agents.

The British dismissed any association with the Pangdatshang brothers as unreliable sources, but the Indians and Americans were interested enough to continue and expand their interest, with me as the only contact able to speak Tibetan. This undercover association was to continue and expand for the next ten years as the fighting inside Tibet increased.

Mission: arrange sanctuary in the United States for the Dalai Lama

With the Chinese Communist Army poised threateningly on Tibet’s eastern border, the Dalai Lama and entourage fled from Lhasa to the western Tibet border town of Yatung, and the Dalai Lama’s mother and family located in the Indian border town of Kalimpong.

I was requested by the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, Jigme Norbu, abbot of Taktser Monastery in East Tibet, to arrange secretly for him to travel to the United States, to permit him to deliver a request to the American President for sanctuary in the United States.

After two weeks of secret negotiations, which included the translating of approved documents in anticipation of the world-wide repercussions of such an event, Jigme Norbu arrived in the United to the avid international media anticipation of the Dalai Lama’s arrival.

A false seal prepared by the Chinese authorities

When all the necessary documentation was completed, and the spiriting of the Dalai Lama to leave Tibet secretly through India to the United States, the Dalai Lama was “persuaded” by Tibet’s three leading abbots to consult the State Oracle, who stated that the Dalai Lama must return to Lhasa.

While all this was happening the Tibetan delegation to Peking to conduct talks with the Chinese leaders returned to say that they had not signed the May 17th Agreement, stating that “Tibet is a part of China”, but that it had been signed by a false seal prepared by the Chinese authorities.

That spurious document is what gave the Chinese Army the necessary authority to invade Tibet in 1952, claiming that it was “part of China”.

The invasion

250,000 soldiers were able to roll over the official Tibetan “army” of risible feudal recruits, and the Khambas were caught unprepared and offered only token resistance by individual tribes.

That suppression, followed by increasing Chinese military and civilian domination and an approved policy of encouraging Chinese with high salaries and official cooperation, began the “Hanisation” of Tibet and the plundering of its assets of oil, gold and uranium.

The Chinese military occupation of Tibet was precarious, as they soon discovered. They imposed a series of taxes, ostensibly for the “Aid to Korea Fund”, on crops, wool and herds of animals, until the people were paying more for the Chinese occupation than they were paying to their feudal nobles and Buddhist monasteries.

Rebellion

The increasing intransigence of the Tibetans, especially in Kham, was such that the Chinese “advisory” representative in Lhasa, Chang Ching-wu, refused to meet with the Tibetan cabinet ministers and demanded personal meetings with the Dalai Lama.

For the first time a powerful anti-Chinese group calling itself the Mi-mang Tsong-du (or “People’s Party”) began operating in Lhasa, denouncing the 17 Point Agreement, holding demonstrations, and placarding the walls with anti-Chinese posters. In Kham there were sporadic incidents of local rebellion as infuriated groups from within the many tribes attacked the isolated Chinese garrisons.

“Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” between India and China

In India, I was employed by the Daily Telegraph to write about the escalating troubles in Tibet and this increased the tensions in my relationship with the Indian and British authorities.

But the Americans were interested and recruited me to write and broadcast about the developing unrest inside Tibet.

On 19th April, 1954, India and China signed an agreement in Bandung, Indonesia, entitled “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” which were:

(i) mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty;
(ii) mutual non-aggression;
(iii) mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs;
(iv) equality and mutual benefit; and
(v) peaceful coexistence.

In the text of the communiqué which was issued on 29th April 1954 it stated that the question of China’s occupation of Tibet was settled between them in the phrase “the Tibet region of China”.

Opposition leader, "it affects us all"

Acharya Kripalani, the Leader of the Opposition Party, declared his disagreement: “Recently we have entered into a treaty with China. This treaty concerns the whole of India. It does not concern a party or a person, it affects us all."

"We feel that China, after it had gone Communist, committed an act of aggression in Tibet. The plea is that China had the ancient right of suzerainty. That right was out of date, old and antiquated. It was theoretical; it had lapsed by the flux of time…I consider this as much colonial aggression indulged in by Western nations…”

Secret meeting

In 1954 the Dalai Lama – together with the Panchen Lama – was invited to attend a meeting of Asian leaders in Beijing, during which the Chinese leaders, especially Chairman Mao of China, publicly demeaned the Dalai Lama.

In response, during the Tibetan delegation’s return to Lhasa, they met secretly with the two Pangdatshang brothers, Topgyay and Rapga, and the two parallel leaders of Amdo province, and approved the launching of a revolt by the Khambas, which would be officially supported militarily by the Tibetan government.

Rapga arrives in India

Shortly after Nehru returned in triumph to India following the critical meeting in Bejing I was approached by a high-ranking Indian intelligence official to discuss the possibility of arranging a meeting with influential Tibetan leaders to mitigate the damage done to the already sensitive Indian relations with Tibet after the Chinese pre-arranged tableaux in Beijing.

I informed the agent that there was no such influential Tibetan among the exiled Tibetans in India, or even in Lhasa.

The Khamba leaders were bitterly opposed to any official of the Lhasa regime – except for the senior ministers, Surkhang and Yuthok, recently accompanying the Dalai Lama to Beijing, who were now isolated in Lhasa.

However, if the Indian government was prepared to cancel Rapga’s order of expulsion and permit him to enter India he was equipped politically to speak for Tibet. I was surprised when the Indian government agreed to my proposal, but I sent word to Rapga and he arrived in Kalimpong, on the Indian border, in March, 1955.

CIA meeting in the open Mall promenade

He created even greater consternation to the Indian officials as he adamantly refused to participate in their proposed long-term subversive propaganda campaign, and insisted that his only interest was in revolt against Chinese military occupation and a subsequent independent and democratic government for Tibet.

Although this alarmed the Indian authorities it was of great interest to the Americans. Rapga wanted supplies of modern weapons for the warring Khambas and he asked me to introduce him to American diplomatic and intelligence people.

A CIA official, John Turner, was appointed to meet with Rapga, with me as interpreter (Rapga was fluent in English but wanted me there with him), in typical spy-cover arrangements on a certain seat in the open Mall promenade of Darjeeling’s shopping area, over a period of four days.

Rapga lays out his plan

When Rapga outlined the situation as he had done with the Indian officials the CIA agent stressed that military help from the USA through India was unlikely because of India’s pro-China policies, and it was unrealistic to attempt it from any other possible place because of Tibet’s mountainous terrain.

Rapga then laid out his plan of a Kham bridgehead in south-east Tibet encompassing the Markham region which they controlled. A weapons supply line from Assam to this area (the route down which I had travelled to India seeking help!) would provide a base for the Khambas to attack the Chinese and make it impossible for them to occupy Tibet for any length of time.

Rapga's vision: democratic government with the Dalai Lama as religious leader only

It was sufficient for the CIA agent to seek further discussions and, in his reply to the agent’s subsequent questions regarding his personal vision for Tibet, Rapga replied that he envisaged making the Kham region the political and commercial centre for Tibet, with Chamdo as the capital, and making Lhasa a religious centre only.

He envisaged a short period of rule to educate former feudal officials and the public in democratic principles, the monasteries would become temporary education centres until a secular administration was formed, hopefully followed by a popularly elected democratic government for Tibet in the future, with the Dalai Lama as religious leader only.

The programme would require ten years to implement, five years for the preliminary stages of a revolt, and five years for education and elections.

Oil, gold and uranium in return for help

Rapga described Tibet’s natural economic resources in return for aid. In addition to its strategic geopolitical advantages there were untapped supplies of known sources of oil, gold and possibly uranium which would adequately pay for any internal development and external trade.

This was not just breath-taking for the CIA official, it was probably too much for the US leaders in Washington because there was no further response.

Double play

Rapga concluded from the discussions with the CIA and, later, other officials in Calcutta and New Delhi that both America and India were playing a double political game: on the one hand placating China in agreement with India’s “third bloc” policy on the Bandung Treaty’s so-called “Peaceful Coexistence”, while at the same time exploring what might be done realistically to aid Tibet to counter Sino-Indian domination in Asia.

Any hope that this might have developed into something positive for Tibet was quickly wiped out.

Chinese propaganda

In August 1956 the Chinese official New China News Agency finally admitted that a rebellion had taken place “in some areas in Western Szechuan”, but that reports in Western media were based on “distorted and grossly delayed information”.

After denying any widespread unrest in Tibet their propaganda declared “Indian expansionists and British imperialists have not given up their ambition to invade Tibet and enslave its people”.

The centre of this subversion was said to be “Kalimpong, the commanding centre of the revolt”, and went on to describe how I had laid the groundwork of the revolt with my contacts with the Pangdatshangs and concluded:

“In the summer of 1955 Surkhang Wangcheng Galei and Tserijong Lozong-Yeihsi and other rebel elements in Tibet, after following the Dalai Lama to Peking passed through the Szechuan Province on their way back to to Tibet. Surkhang and Tserijong went by separate routes to the Northern and Southern parts of the Kansu Autonomous Chou to instigate and direct rebellion along the way. Data now at hand proves that Surkhang directed the reactionaries in the area…”

Wide uprising in Amdo, Chinese mutilated

In late 1956 the Chinese authorities in Tibet arrested the two top Amdo leader-colleagues of the Pangdatshangs, Geshi Sherab Gyaltso and Lobsang Sherab, and this precipitated a wide uprising against the Chinese in Amdo, led by the Golok tribe.

The Goloks captured several hundred Chinese, cut off their noses, and sent them back mutilated. The Chinese replied by sending several thousand troops into the area, but the Goloks were helped by a neighbouring tribe of some 100,000 families in the Dzachuka area, and they slaughtered several hundred Chinese and forced their retreat.

This led to spontaneous outbreaks in a spreading revolt throughout Kham and Amdo.

6 rebels in training to ease Washington’s political guilt

The Mi-mang Tsong-du leader in Lhasa, Alo Chondze, escaped to Kalimpong and reported to me that the fighting had spread from Golok, Batang and Litang areas to Nyarong, Taofu, Chatreng and Mili, an area of about 10,000 square miles involving more than a million people.

Bridges had been destroyed and roads made impassable, isolating the Chinese soldiers in their garrisons and make them easier to attack.

In India, the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalu Thondup was working in close collaboration with the CIA’s Kenneth Khaus, and it was agreed to take six members of Andrutshang’s Chu-zhi-Kang-tru to Taiwan and the USA to receive training in the use of radio transmitters, parachute-jumping and modern weapons, to fly back into Tibet secretly to aid the Khamba revolt.

It was a ridiculous gesture, owing more to Washington’s political guilt over its inability to provide realistic aid to Tibet through Rapga and the Khambas, because of bondage to the Indian and Chinese “third bloc” Bandung Agreement of “Peaceful Coexistence”.

1958: Chinese military starving; 20,000 rebels approaching Lhasa

Meanwhile, the Khamba revolt was sweeping westwards and creating panic among the Chinese military and officials, who were now starving as the single supply road from China was rendered inoperable in the Khamba advance.

The Khambas, in turn, were finding extra supplies of weapons from the Lhasa officials who had made the agreement with them during the earlier visit to Peking.

By mid-1958 it was estimated by the Tibetans that 20,000 Khamba rebels were approaching Lhasa.

Nehru promotes news isolation

Tibet’s geographical and political isolation was further compounded by Prime Minister Nehru’s strenuous attempts to suppress all news of the revolt, strongly condemning all media reports – mostly sent by me.

On February 28th 1958 I was ordered to attend the office of the local Deputy Commissioner and told that unless I “discontinued sending misleading and exaggerated reports and messages about Tibet to the Daily Telegraph or other foreign papers, the Indian Government would be constrained to interdict his residence”.

March 10th

On March 10th, 1959, the Khamba revolt reached Lhasa. On that day the Dalai Lama had received a curt message from the Chinese authorities to attend a meeting with the Chinese officials in Lhasa, without his customary escort.

It looked ominous to his advisers and they persuaded him to refuse and to consider preparations to leave Lhasa. At the same time the city demonstrations had escalated rapidly with the rumoured arrival of the rampaging Khambas, many already inside Lhasa while the majority were surrounding the city, and thousands of demonstrators remained around the Norbulinka Palace where the Dalai Lama was in residence to prevent the Chinese from forcing an entry.

Dalai Lama flees Tibet, escorted by two hundred Khambas. Nehru: "bazaar rumours"

On March 15th the Dalai Lama secretly left the city disguised as an ordinary armed soldier, with his senior ministers, and escorted by some two hundred armed Khambas.

On March 17th the Chinese shelled the Norbulinka Palace assuming that the Dalai Lama was still there.

On the same day in the Indian Lok Sabha, or Parliament, Prime Minister Nehru was addressing the question of my expulsion, declaring “Mr Patterson accepted every bazaar rumour as fact”, that what was happening in Tibet “was a clash of minds rather a clash of arms. There is no violence in Tibet”.

Conditional asylum in India

There was pandemonium in Parliament when he was forced to announce later that day that “fighting had broken out in Lhasa and the Indian consulate was damaged in the shelling”.

Even the arrival of the Dalai Lama on the border of India was announced by the Chinese before the Indians, to Nehru’s further embarrassment in India’s Parliament.

The Indian Prime Minister reluctantly agreed to asylum for him and his government ministers, but he was forbidden to set up a government-in-exile, and Nehru imposed strict conditions of no political activities or recognition other than as religious leader of Tibet.

However, the Dalai Lama in his first public address did repudiate the 1951 May 17th 17-Point Agreement imposed by the Chinese authorities without his permission.

Mildly worded resolution passed by the UN

In November 1959 a three-member delegation went to the UN to request that the question of Tibet be put on the agenda. This was sponsored by Ireland and Malaya, and a mildly worded resolution was passed – but rejected by both India and Britain and the USA abstained.

The issue was raised again in 1961 and 1965, but no effective action was taken. There was not even a comment from the so-called “Afro-Asian bloc”, even when the International Commission of Jurists found that the crime of genocide was sufficiently established.

The final cut

The International Commission of Jurists agreed to establish a Legal Enquiry Committee and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate genocide against China, but there was sufficient proof to show that the Chinese “had violated the Tibetan right to exist as a religious group…but not the right to exist as a national, ethnical (sic) or racial group”.

They classified this as “cultural genocide”.

It was the end of any realistic expectation that the question of China’s illegal occupation might be settled in Tibet’s favour. With the Dalai Lama silenced except for religious addresses by the Sino-Indian “third bloc” Bandung Agreement stranglehold, there was no effective international spokesman or sponsor for Tibet.

1964: One small restaurant serving Tibetan food

I returned to Tibet twice, in 1964 to secretly film Khamba guerrillas destroying military convoys inside Tibet, and again in 1987 as adviser to a Hollywood film project. I was appalled at the Chinese cultural destruction of Tibet.

Monasteries were devastated ruins. The trans-Tibet road was crowded with Chinese military vehicles. The vibrant Tibetans I had known were sullen and without hope. Everywhere there were featureless Chinese buildings, troops, merchants, officials and dress. For the tourists there were Chinese hotels, restaurants, singers, dances, and operas. I found only one small restaurant in Lhasa serving Tibetan food.

Pangdatshang brothers killed

I learned that the Pangdatshang brothers had all been executed. Yangpel was abducted from Hong Kong, taken to Beijing and, later, to Lhasa where he was paraded through the streets and killed.

Topgyay was taken to Peking for “medical treatment” and pronounced dead from some unstated illness.

Rapga was shot on the main street of Kalimpong in India and died soon afterwards, and no assailant found.

Dalai Lama's impossible situation: warrior Khambas and international unconcern

The Dalai Lama is in an impossible situation, even with a Nobel Peace prize and a declared willingness to remove himself from political leadership in Tibet.

Deeply committed to a non-violent solution, yet he knows that any possible solution must include Kham and Amdo, and the warrior Khambas will never agree to Chinese domination.

On the other hand, the Chinese, having arbitrarily annexed Kham and Amdo, and only recognising the single central province of U-Tsang as “the Tibetan autonomous region”, will never agree to their return to Tibet.

Time, millions of Chinese colonisers and international unconcern will confirm their rape of Tibet.

Close to ninety years old now, explorer/journalist George Patterson became involved with the Tibetan resistance to the invading Chinese Communist army in the winter of 1949, when he rode to India to deliver a plea for help from Tibet to the outside world.

Though the international community failed to come to Tibet’s aid, George remained in northern India, determined to report on unfolding events and to be of assistance to the fledgling Tibetan resistance.

He had become one of the leading journalists covering the Chinese invasion, when he was approached by the family of the Dalai Lama. They were anxious to smuggle the religious leader out of Tibet and on to the safety of the USA.

Thanks to his contacts, Patterson obtained copies of the classified exchanges between the Tibetans and then US Foreign Secretary Dean Acheson. While these delicate negotiations were under way, a Tibetan delegation in Beijing was stalling for time while the Dalai Lama was attempting to leave Tibet.

It was during these negotiations that the Chinese authorities, in order to excuse their illegal occupation of Tibet, produced a 17 Point Agreement to justify their invasion. When the Tibetan delegation said they had no authority to sign this, the Chinese used a forged Tibetan seal to give it pseudo-authority. When Patterson exposed this international outrage in 1952, the Chinese government marked him as an enemy of the state and ordered him to be silenced.

In response to the seriousness of the threat, the Security Service of Indian Prime Minister Nehru offered Patterson protection, as well as the right to arm himself against an assassination attempt. Regardless of the threats, Patterson continued reporting on Tibetan affairs for the next ten years.

Text and image courtesy of George Patterson and the Longriders Guild in UK.

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