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Exile Tibetans denounce the "Serf Emancipation Day"

By Lobsang Wangyal | Tibet Sun

Kesang Y. Takla, minister of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Tibetan government-in-exile, during a press conference in Dharamshala, India, on 27 March 2009. She denounced China’s newly-created “Serf Emancipation Day” a public holiday on 28 March in Tibet to mark the dissolution of the Dalai Lama’s government in Tibet. She said the observance of the day ‘offensive and provocative.’Tibet Sun/Lobsang Wangyal/India

Tibetans in exile denounce China’s newly-created public holiday on 28 March tagged “Serf Emancipation Day”, saying the observance of the event is aggravating problems in Tibet and it is “offensive and provocative.”

China says they abolished a feudal and theocratic system similar to mediaeval Europe, and “liberated” millions of Tibetan serfs and slaves from the Dalai Lama’s autocratic rule.

“We believe the observance of the “Serf Emancipation Day” on 28 March is aimed at destabilising and creating chaos in Tibet,” said Kesang Y Takla, the minister of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

She refuted China’s claim of “liberating” millions of serfs, saying the unarmed Tibetan people’s protests asking for basic human rights in Tibet show the reality.

“If the “serfs” are happy with their “emancipation”, why are Tibetans risking lives and limbs to protest Chinese rule in Tibet.”

The whole of Tibet is said to be under heavy security clampdown, with additional troops deployed ahead of two sensitive events — the 50 years of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the one year anniversary of the last year’s mass protests in all the Tibetan areas that left at least 220 Tibetans dead from military crackdown.

Takla said that since 1949/50 after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, over 1.2 million Tibetans died as a direct result of Chinese communist rule and more than 6,000 monasteries were razed to the ground.

“Today, it is hard to come across a Tibetan family that has not had at least one member imprisoned or killed by the Chinese regime.”

She said 28 March will be observed as the day when the Tibetans as a people lost all vestiges of their basic individual and collective freedoms.

Tibetan organisations in Dharamshala have planned a mass rally and a candle light vigil to denounce the Chinese ‘propaganda ploy’.

China has organised a photo exhibition in Beijing displaying about 100 photos showing Tibetan prisons and the punishments meted out to prisoners, and the “50 years of democratic reforms” in Tibet.

Citing a photograph of the Nangze Shar Prison in Lhasa as and example, Takla said, it could accommodate not more than a score of prisoners.

“After the so-called liberation and emancipation of the Tibetan “serfs”, prisons have come up in every part of Tibet. In Lhasa alone, there are five major prisons with a total prison population between 3,500 – 4,000,” she said.

“The best judge of whether Tibetans have been “liberated” is the Tibetan people alone. They vote with their feet and lives by crossing the Himalayas to seek freedom and happiness outside of their “liberated” Tibet.”

Copyright © 2009 Tibet Sun

Published in Tibet Sun