Letter: Tibet from historical viewpoint

Thu, 04/24/2008 12:25 PM  |  Reader's Forum

Apparently, there is a mass misperception ardently promulgated by the communist Chinese Ministry of Disinformation. The claim is made that communist China has suzerainty over Tibet (and others) based on historical precedent. What is now called China was not China before.

Previous to 1218, the Tibetan people's army held many parts of China. Then, in 1218, Genghis Khan started the Yuan Dynasty (1218-1368).

The Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) was the last in China to be ruled by ethnic Hans (the main Chinese ethnic group). The Ming court had little interest in Tibet, viewing Tibet as an independent state to the west where Tibet sent periodic missions of "tribute emissaries" to the Ming court, as they had during the previous Yuan Mongol rule.

While the Qing (or Manchu) Dynasty (1644-1912) is often referred to as "China", it was in fact a multi-national dynastic state. Manchus, Muslims, Mongols, Koreans and ethnic Chinese (Han) were each governed on a separate basis and no attempt was made to create a common nationality or citizenship.

Following a revolution in China, the local Tibetan militia launched a surprise attack in 1912 on the Chinese garrison stationed in Tibet. The Chinese officials in Lhasa were forced to sign the "Three Point Agreement" which provided for the surrender and expulsion of Chinese forces in central Tibet.

In 1951, the Red Army invaded Tibet with the Marxist point of view that this incursion was only the "trend of history" and the "liberation of the people".

The Tibetans never regarded Tibet as a part of "China". To back this up, the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva-based human rights organization, issued a report in 1960 which examined the legal status of the Tibetan government that Tibet was, at the very least, a de-facto independent state from 1913-1950, managing its own domestic affairs free from any outside authority. In 1950, there was a people and a territory, and a government which conducted foreign relations as an independent state.

The present government is attempting the signification of their part of the continent by claiming that the 56 plus ethnic groups in and around China proper all belong to an "indivisible part of the Chinese people".

How you view this history is up to you; classify all the various central Asian peoples as under a communist regime or consider them as individual ethnic groups with human rights.

BRIEN DOYLE
Jakarta

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