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China to celebrate Dalai Lama's exile

By Gillian Wong | AP

The second meeting of the 9th Tibetan Regional Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is held in Lhasa, capital of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, 12 January 2009. The lawmakers on the 15th proposed the creation of a holiday to mark the quelling of a pro-independence uprising in the remote Himalayan region 50 years ago.File photo/Xinhua/Chogo/Tibet

Chinese-backed Tibetan lawmakers proposed on Friday the creation of a holiday to mark the quelling of a pro-independence uprising in the remote Himalayan region 50 years ago.

The proposal to celebrate “Serfs Emancipation Day” was the latest attempt by Beijing to dampen support for the Dalai Lama in Tibet by focusing attention on the region’s feudal past and highlighting the economic benefits brought by Chinese rule.

The move underscores efforts by the Chinese government to discredit the Tibetan spiritual leader and remind Tibetans that they should celebrate the 50th anniversary of the downfall of feudalism, instead of marking a failed rebellion.

It comes as China braces for a possible repeat in March of last year’s deadly anti-government riots in the capital, Lhasa.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Tibetan legislators proposed that holiday should fall on 28 March. That was the date in 1959 when China announced the dissolution of the Tibetan government.

When Chinese forces entered Tibet in 1949, they tried to transform the Buddhist, feudal order into a socialist, secular society. Tibetans launched a rebellion on 10 March 1959, to try to oust the Chinese, but the uprising ended shortly after with the flight of the Dalai Lama into exile.

Most Tibetans still remain fiercely loyal to the exiled spiritual leader. But he is reviled by Beijing, which regards him as a backer of separatist activity in Tibet.

“The Dalai Lama has been trying to embellish the old feudalistic serfdom which was actually even worse than the Middle Ages in Europe,” said Zhou Yuan, head of the history department at the Chinese Centre for Tibetan Studies in Beijing. “Setting this date makes this point in history clearer and helps foreign people and young Chinese people understand this history better.”

But Michael Davis, a law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong who writes about Tibet, said such a move demonstrated the government’s insensitivity toward the Tibetan community.

“They’re clearly countering what they view as international and local Tibetan failure to understand what they think happened,” Davis said.

Fu Jun, a spokesman for Tibet’s Communist Party branch, confirmed in a phone interview that the proposal was being discussed at the ongoing second annual session of the regional People’s Congress in Lhasa.

Xinhua said the date was expected to be endorsed when the session ends Monday.

China says Tibet has always been part of its territory, while many Tibetans say their land was virtually independent for centuries.

The government has invested billions building infrastructure, including the world’s highest railway. But critics of Chinese rule in Tibet say the region remains one of China’s poorest and say most of the benefits of economic development have gone to members of the Han Chinese majority, rather than to Tibetans.

Earlier this week, state media reported that Tibet should see its economy grow by 10 percent in 2009. Economic growth in Tibet is a point of pride for the central government, which offers it as proof of its concern for Tibetans.

Copyright © 2009 AP

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