Tibet denotes its geographical location on the world map as on the high plateau on the northern side of the Himalayas. It stretches over an extensive area with mountains, lakes, and rivers between Central, East, and South Asia. It lengthens its expansion with more than 800 miles(1,300 km) from the west to the east at the height of 16,500 feet (about 5,000 metres) above sea level. The comparatively high northern part of this plateau is named by the ‘Qiangtang’. It is ‘ Tibet Autonomous Region(the largest of the organized part to Chinese provinces) designated by the rest of the world as “the roof of the world”. Tibet, familiar as Buddhist territory, is enclosed with its border by the Chinese provinces of Qinghai to the northeast, Sichuan to the east, Yunnan to the southeast, by Myanmar(Burma), India, Bhutan and Nepal to the south, by the disputed Kashmir region to the west and by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjian to the northwest.
The name ‘Tibet’ is derived from the Mongolian Thubet, the Chinese Tufan, the Tai Thibet and the Arabic Tubbat. Tibet has earned its fame globally for its orientation of water sources. For example, the ‘Qinghai-Tibet plateau’ is China’s prime source of water. Tibetan glaciers and snow-covered hills and mountains provide water for some giant rivers such as the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Indus, and so many those have been drenching as many as ten countries of Asia for centuries. Hence, Tibet has been designated with ‘Asia’s water tower’. ‘Lhasa’ is the capital city of Tibet and the place of hilltop ‘Potala Place’, once the winter dwelling place of Dalai Lama, deemed as the political and spiritual leader of the Tibetans and Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s spiritual heart and known for its golden statue of the young Buddha.
From its primitive age, Tibet has confined itself within culture, language(both spoken and written, operative in Tibet along within Bhutan, Nepal and in parts of northern India including Sikkim), religion and political system until that period of the Chinese invasion in 1949/1950 against the ‘Tibetan Government in Exile(A government temporarily established on foreign soil due to the occupation of its territory by another authority)’ but according to the declaration of ‘The Republic of China'(ROC) ‘Tibet was placed under the sovereignty of China’ since then the ‘Qing’ dynasty(1638-1912) completed its short period of Nepalese regime(1788-1792) from parts of Tibet in c.1793. So, Tibet can be defined as the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’, which is practically a province-level existence of the PRC(People’s Republic of China) controlled by a People’s Government and led by a Chairman. However, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile declares itself an independent state under unlawful occupation. The ‘People’s Republic of China’ has treated Tibet as an integral part of China for centuries. And now it is a fact that if Tibet is under unlawful grab as its declaration, then the illegal penetration in a large scale of Chinese settlers into Tibet is a naked violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Surprisingly the ‘People’s Republic of China’ never imposes any sovereign authority over Tibet, but Tibetans always feel its military subjection and domination after the 1949 or 1950 Chinese onslaught over Tibet. On 9th September of 1951, China had sent thousands of troops to Lhasa. These troops marked their signs over Tibet by their serial destructions of monasteries, the grip of religion, denial of political freedom etc. Tibetans tried their best to revive their country through a horrific rebellion in March of 1959, but they were trampled brutally.
China had an opportunity to overpower Tibet due to its hunger for earning international recognition and upgrading its defence system. With palavers between the Government of Tibet and the PRC due to a military conflict held in the Chamdo area of Western Kham in October 1950. After its liberation in 1947, India viewed Tibet as an independent country, but gradually, it innovated its assessment about the same as a part of China due to its perceptions. Coming to the point of Tibetan culture, it has a distinction only because of its unique geographic and climatic conditions. Most Tibetans follow their Buddhism, whereas some abide by the native Bon religion. There are a few fellows from the Muslim minority. Along with these, Tibet has also attained its worst distinctive dress for human rights violations such as the Tibetans are deprived of their rights of self-determination, freedom of religions, beliefs, associations, the rights to maintain their own identities and autonomies, freely talking, assembly and so many whereas genocide, maltreatment in custody including physical torture, the arbitrary arrest is some common scenarios of Tibet held during the war period. Sexual assault, forced abortion, sterilization of the women and the girls and intimidation are also some fiery signs of violation of human rights. According to Tibetan allegations, the People’s Republic of China constantly imposes all these nasty exercises on them. So, they need their absolute freedom from this perdition. At this miserable condition of Tibet, the whips of the same spontaneously claim to safeguard Tibetan identity, freedom, human rights, and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. Along with these, the dome of the whips demands ‘Rangzen'(independence from China).
The 14th Dalai Lama, named Tenzin Gyatso (original name: Lhamo Thondup), who was in Exile in India, had set up a democratic government, known as ‘the Central Tibetan Administration’ in the north Indian hill station of Mussoorie on 29th April 1959, moved to Dharmasala later where he resides now. This democratic government now claims the ‘Middle Way Approach'(MAW), which asserts that Tibet remains a part of the ‘People’s Republic of China, but it is eager to manipulate its greater control over its affairs. Tibet has been bearing its rich history dating back 2000 years, adorned with a basket of incidents. The reign of Songtsen Gambo, the 33rd king of the ‘Yarlung dynasty’, denotes the commencement of the imperial period or the imperial age mortally. The imperial age witnessed Tibetan history as the conclusion of the clashes between Tibet and China concerning Tibet as a strong and independent state. Given this, China was compelled to deal on a ‘footing of equality. From the 13th to 18th centuries, the Chinese ‘Mongol’ and ‘Manchu’ emperors ruled over Tibet. So, the Chinese claim over Tibet is legitimated in this historical document. Tibet had to suffer foreign rule over it for about 700 years ago. By 1279, the Mongol leader, Kublai Khan, established the Yuan dynasty in China. Since then, the Mongols could reign over the whole of China until the same was able to regain its independence with the establishment of the native Ming dynasty in 1368 and grappled the throne till 1644. Surprisingly it had no authority over Tibet despite being the native dynasty. After the Ming dynasty, another potency, the Manchus, occupied China in 1644, set up the Qing dynasty and ruled over China till 1911. It made Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetans as its orbs as the Mongols had during its regime.
Among the emperors of the Manchus, a few were eager to impose their influences over Tibet. To the fullest extent, they became successful, but their success did not linger too long due to the brief British invasion over Tibet in 1904. From 1911 to 1950, a remarkable short period for Tibet had been inscribed on the page of history due to its avoidance of undue foreign authority. It was able to prove itself as a self-dependent state.
And consequently, the day on 8th January of 1913, the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, returning from India, declared Tibet as a complete independent statehood which owed its self national flag, currency, stamps, passports and army as the other contemporary countries had their own. Tibet never became a member of the Second World War despite being squeezed by the Great Britain and the United States of the ‘Allied Powers’. The British government never admitted Chinese authority over Tibet because China never signed the manuscript Simla Convention of 1914 with Britain and Tibet. Tibet’s economy is guided primely by its agriculture. The crops like barley, wheat, buckwheat, rye, potatoes, oats, rapeseeds, cotton, varieties of fruits and vegetables are grown in Tibet. These are the keys to agricultural sources of income. Although Tibet has a shortage of ploughable lands, it multiplies its GDP(The Gross Domestic Product) with livestock, a promising primary profession mainly on the Tibetan Plateau. Tibet has added its third industry to uplift its economy in recent years. Two aspects of nature—- forests and grasslands both play an essential role in the economy of Tibet. Sheep, cattle, goats, camels, yaks, donkeys and horses graze in these vast grasslands. A variety of minerals have riched Tibet’s economy. Plenty of goldfields, large borax deposits, radium, iron, titanium and arsenic reserves could have been the prime sources of Tibet’s economy. But poor transportation links have made an obstacle to uprise its economy. Surprisingly, China has recently announced a new railway connection between Lhasa and Qinghai, eliminating Tibet’s poor economy. But the prime motto behind this is to penetrate Chinese migrants into Tibet. Although tourism is an important source of revenue of Tibet and China is constantly highlighting Tibet as a happy and prosperous integral part of China, it is a bitter truth that not any journalists, any tourists and also not any diplomats are allowed in Tibet yet to focus the inhabitants to the world. Although Tibet has come out from its obsessed past, it needs a thorough illuminant future for its upcoming days.
Timeline
7th to 9th century: Namri Songzen(also known as Namri Lontsen, the 32nd Emperor of the Yarlung Dynasty, ruled Tibet c. 570 to 618) extended his dominion to rule the central part of the Tibetan Plateau. Songtsan Gampo and Tengri Khan were his children. Namri Songzen and his kiddies started to unite Tibetan-colonised areas in contention with China.
822: A peace treaty named in history as ‘The Sino-Tibetan Peace Treaty’ of 822 was signed between Ralpacan(Rapalchen) of the Yarlung Dynasty, Emperor of Tibet(629-877) and Emperor Tang Muzong of the Tang Dynasty of China to mark the boundary.
1244: Following 1240, particularly in 1244 Mongol conquest of Tibet. And Tibet under Yuan Dynasty’s rule was truly well-controlled.
1578: The Mongol leader, Altan Khan, was proselyted into Buddhism by Sonam Gyatso and was signed as the title ‘Dalai Lama'(Ocean of Wisdom, known as spiritual leaders) in 1578. On heresy, Altan Khan bestowed the title ‘Dalai Lama’ to the rulers of Tibet in 1578.
1624: Tibet allowed Portuguese missionaries to open Church as its European contact.
1630 -1717: Tibet involved itself in a battle for power between Manchu and Mongols in China.
1717: Dzungur Khanate(Zunghar Khanate) invaded Tibet and plundered Lhasa. But eventually was repulsed by the Qing dynasty of China in 1720 and instated the rule of Dalai Lama again
1724: Resident Commissioner was installed to drive Tibet and included Kham and Amdo (two of the three traditional provinces of Tibet).
1750: The Lhasa riot was occurred on 11th November 1750 against the Chinese Resident Commissioner and was suppressed by the Chinese army. For a temporary solution Dalai Lama government was formed to run Tibet under the supervision of the Resident Commissioner.
1774: British East India Company’ decided for trading in Tibet sent an agent named George Bogle to cultivate the trade possibilities.
1788 and 1791: China sent its troops to Tibet to drive out the Nepalese Invaders.
1793: Chinese Residential Commissioners were ordered to take care of the volition of Dalai and other senior lamas.
1850: Tibetan government was compelled to seal all of its borders for the foreigners due to a conflict between Russia and Great Britain regarding occupation over Central Asia.
1865: Great Britain started cultivating all over Tibet.
1904: Dalai Lama departed British military enterprise coordinated under Colonel Francis Younghusband and Britain overran Tibet to sign the trading agreement.
1906: British-Chinese galaxy of 1906 confirmed 1904 trading agreement from that Great Britain promised not to intervene in Tibet and in return China had to compensate for that.
1907: Both Great Britain and Russia admitted Chinese dominion over Tibet.
1908-1909: Dalai Lama fled to India due to Chinese military enterprise in order to control the Tibetan government was restored by China itself.
1912 April: Surprisingly Chinese army surrendered to the Tibet government after the Chinese Republic declaration.
1912: 13th Dalai Lama, Thubeten Gyatso came back to Tibet from India and coincidentally Chinese armed forces left Tibet.
1913: Tibet claimed independence again after decades of earthlings by Britain and China due to their unethical occupations over Central Asia.
1935: The 14th and present Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso was born in a peasant family in a small village in north-eastern Tibet and after two years of his birth he was declared as the subsequent Dalai Lama after his 13 proceedings.
1949: Mao Zedong, a Chinese communist revolutionary, declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and menaced Tibet with ‘salvation’.
1950: The People’s Republic of China enacted a life-long assertion to Tibet on the Himalayan country and incorporated it with its own territory. The 14th Dalai Lama became 15 years and therefore officially considered as the head of the state.
The mid-1950s: Tibet is situated on the Tibetan plateau in Asia stretched about 2.4 million square km, nearly 1/4th of China’s territory. It is the traditional homeland of Tibetan people. Tibet has been occupied and ruled by China since 1951 to destruct the national and cultural identities of the Tibetans. This melpractice of China provoked the Tibetans to rebel against them.
1951:Tibetans leaders were compelled to sign a treaty as per China’s beckoning named ‘Seventeen Point Agreement’ which assured Tibetan autonomy as well as to pay to respect the Buddhist religion but ensured the outset of Chinese civil and military headquarters at Lhasa.
1954: The 14th and present Dalai Lama reached Beijing to negotiate with Mao Zedong but unfortunately China disobeyed the ‘Seventeen Point Agreement’.
1959 March: Absolute insurgency spread over Lhasa. Thousands were died during the oppression of the revolt. Dalai Lama and most of his ministers fled to northern India followed by nearly 80,000 other Tibetans.
1963: Tibet was impermissible for the foreigners.
1965: Chinese government had set up the ‘Tibetan Autonomous Region'(TAR).
1966: The Cutural Revolution touched Tibet and as a result of that a lot of monasteries and cultural artefacts were destroyed.
Late1970s:- The Cultural Revolution(sociopolitical movement in China from 1966 until Mao Zedong’s death in 1976) impacted the unfasten of repression although the influx of Han Chinese(an East Asian ethnic group and nation native to Greater China) into Tibet carried on.
1971: Foreign visitors(foreign tourists) were further allowed to get their entrances into Tibet.
The 1980s: The reformation of China’s new economic development began with the adoption of China’s state-owned enterprises and open door policy(equal privileges for all countries trading with China initiated by the US) in late 1978 and encouraged investments but averted any initiative towards greater autonomy for Tibet.
1987: The Dalai Lama demanded Tibet as a zone of peace and wanted continuously to negotiate with China with an aim of getting in spirit the self-rule for Tibet within China.
1988: Martial law was put into effect by China following the riot which was propagated massively.
1989: The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
1993: Negotiation between China and the Dalai Lama went under.
1995: The Dalai Lama recommended a six-year-old boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the true rebirth of the Panchen Lama(the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism) but the Chinese authorities kept the boy under house arrest and announced another six-year-old boy, Gyancain Norbu as their official Pamchen Lama.
2002: The Dalai Lama and the authority of Beijing got consensus again with their contracts.
2006 July: A new communication of railway between Tibetan capital, Lhasa and the Chinese city named ‘Golmud’ was commenced and designated as a success of engineering by the Chinese authorities whereas it was illustrated as the increase of Han Chinese traffic to Tibet with an aim of abolishing of traditional Tibetan culture.
2007 November: The Dalai Lama indicated at the ending with the centuries-old tradition of selecting his successor pointing the people of Tibet should have a role in the same.
2007 December: According to Chinese state media, the number of tourists hiked at its utmost record over 64% year on year at just over four million.
2008 March: Anti-China protests stepped into the worst violence that Tibet had experienced in last 20 years, just months before the Olympic Games hosted by China. These protests were focused by the world on the region at the high time of the progress of the Olympic torch relay.
2008 October: The Dalai Lama surrendered his effort of reaching an agreement with China about the future of Tibet and decided to demonstrate with all-out towards Beijing.
2008 November: The British government admitted China’s direct rule over Tibet for the first time. This postponed Dalai Lama’s negotiation with China. The Tibetan exile was blamed for the failure of the negotiation by China whereas an internal meeting of Tibetan exiles in northern India kept them intact with their standing point of seeking autonomy from China.
2008 December: A civil war was appeared in between European Union and China after Dalai Lama convened European Union MPs and China alienated its ties with France following President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with Dalai Lama.
2009 January: Being influenced with taking revenge, Chinese authorities arrested and confined 81 people whereas interrogated nearly 6,000 alleged criminals in which a security crackdown was called by the ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’.
2009 March: Chinese authorities illustrated Dalai Lama’s flight to India on the night of 17/03/1959 with a new ‘Serfs’ Emancipation Day’, celebrated annually on 28th of March as a public holiday. China boosted its officeholder into ‘Panchen Lama’, the second-highest-ranking Lama, as spokesperson for Chinese rule in Tibet. Tibet government in exile reopened Tibet for the tourists after a two-month closure.
2009 April: China and France developed their relationship at the London G20 summit after a meeting between President Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama.
2009 October: China assured Tibetans involvement in anti-China riots in Lhasa in March 2008.
2010 April: The Dalai Lama became able to talk to Chinese officials after more than one year by his instrumentals.
2011 March: In this month of 2011, a Tibetan Buddhist monk among twelve monks and nuns in a Tibetan-populated part of Sichuan Province in China did burn himself as self-immolation to establish a horrific protest against Chinese rule over Tibet.
2011 April: On 14th March 2011 the Dalai Lama declared his official retirement from politics and any administrative body. On 27th April 2011, Lobsang Sangay was elected Kalon Tripa(Tibetan Prime Minister-in-exile) by the exiled Tibetans.
2011 July: Xi Jinping, the man who pledged the Chinese to smash Tibetan separatism in his speech at the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist takeover of Tibet to become the president of the Republic of China. But the Dalai Lama was cordially invited to Washington by the honourable president of the U.S.A., Barack Obama to express his ‘strong support for human rights in Tibet.
2011 November: To give up all of his political and administrative responsibilities, the Dalai Lama questioned the wisdom and rationality of self-immolation as a protest against Chinese rule over Tibet.
2011 December: An exiled Tibetan rights group disclosed the first monk of 12 monks and nuns named Tenzin Phuntsog died after several days of his setting fire as his self-immolation.
2012 May: Two men got immolated in fire, one of whom expired as the official Chinese media reported. Tibetan capital, Lhasa witnessed these first two self-immolations against Chinese rule over Tibet.
2012 August: Two Tibetan teenagers followed them in Sichuan province on the same issue.
2012 November: UN human rights chief Navi Pilley asked China for an explanation of rising in self-immolations where on the eve of the 18th Communist Party of China National Congress, three teenage Tibetan monks repeated the same.
2013 February: Free Tibet group(a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, founded in 1987, based in London, England) advocates for a Free Tibet, said the number of self-immolations crossed over 100 as a protest against Chinese rule over Tibet since March 2011.
2013 June:- China was not ready to accept all the allegations arisen against it by the UN human rights activists that it rehabilitated around two million Tibetans in ‘socialist villages.’
2014 February: As the US president, Barack Obama continued talking to the Dalai Lama, China warned a US embassy official in Beijing to talk to the US government.
2014 April: According to Human Rights Watch(an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City, conducts research and advocacy on human rights), the Tibetan inhabitants living in Nepal had been under a lot of restrictions due to Chinese pressure.
2014 June: The Tibetan government-in-exile was able to motivate people worldwide to support its campaign for more autonomy in favour of people living inside the region.
Image courtesy: liming0759
