Cultural Revolution in Tibet

Buddhist statue destroyed during the Cultural Revolution at Tholing Monastery, Guge Kingdom.

The Cultural Revolution in Tibet was the extension into Tibet of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution broke out in China.[1] In June 1966, an extraordinary session of the Communist Party committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region decided to extend the Cultural Revolution to Tibet.[2][3]

In November 1966, the Red Guards—mainly Tibetans from certain universities in Beijing—arrived in Tibet. Often combining their revolutionary work with visits to their families, they spread the Cultural Revolution to villages and pastures across the Tibetan Plateau.

According to Pierre-Antoine Donnet, from 1966 onward the Red Guards systematically, methodically, deliberately, and comprehensively destroyed Tibetan civilization.[4] According to the Chinese writer Wang Lixiong, the authorities in Tibet often attempted to restrain radical actions; for example, the People's Liberation Army consistently supported the more conservative factions against the rebels. Temples and monasteries survived best in non-peripheral areas and cities where the authorities were still able to exercise some degree of control.[5][2] In his response to Wang Lixiong, the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya points out that he places the blame on the victims, whereas this mass movement spared no one in Tibet or in China.[6]

History

In the eyes of the ideologues of Maoism, Tibet was far from being completely "liberated".[7] In her book Mémoire interdite. Témoignages sur la Révolution culturelle au Tibet, the writer Woeser reports the address by Premier Zhou Enlai on 15 October 1966 at the Central Institute for Nationalities: "The Tibetan region has been liberated three times. The first time in 1951, when the Liberation Army intervened so that Tibet could rejoin the great family that is our nation; the second time in 1959, when, following the uprisings, serfdom was abolished as part of economic reforms; the third time during the Cultural Revolution, when the lamas were able to emancipate themselves.[8]

The Cultural Revolution markedly began in Tibet with the banning of the Monlam festival in February 1966. Led by Wang Qimei, the Cultural Revolution Committee was established in May in Lhasa.[9]

Split among the Red Guards: the "Alliance" versus the "Rebels"

According to Melvyn C. Goldstein, as cited by Daniel Berounsky, in Lhasa in 1968, supporters of Mao and his slogans split into two antagonistic factions. One faction, the "Alliance" (Nyamdre), brought together supporters of the local authorities of the time because the situation in Tibet required special treatment. The second faction, the "Rebels" (Gyenlo), created at the instigation of itinerant Red Guards from inland China, felt the need to struggle against certain officials, in line with Mao's statement that "the bourgeoisie had infiltrated the party, the government, the army and cultural circles." A third force, the People's Liberation Army, remained outside this factional struggle.[10]

According to the Tibetan writer Woeser, author of Mémoire interdite. Témoignages sur la Révolution culturelle au Tibet, the "Rebels" faction was led by Tao Changsong, a Han Chinese from Yangzhou who had been assigned to a secondary school in Lhasa in 1960. From September 1968 to October 1976, he served as vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region.[8] Melvyn C. Goldstein indicates that at the beginning of 1968, more than 300 cadres, including leaders such as Tao Changsong of the Gyenlo faction, Liu Shaoming of the Nyamdre faction, and Ren Rong, the military commander, went to study sessions in Beijing.[11]

For Kim Yeshi, there were no real ideological differences between the two factions. They reflected the "power struggles raging in China" and grievances accumulated at the local level. The conditions for a "civil war" existed in Tibet.[12]

Jokhang Temple was one of the two bases of the Tibetan Red Guards belonging to the Gyenlo faction. In June 1968, the People's Liberation Army came out of its reserve and attacked this stronghold, resulting in the deaths of 12 Gyenlo militants and two soldiers.[13]

In 1969, armed uprisings broke out in several parts of Tibet. According to Wang Lixiong, Tibetans were fighting to defend their land and herds, which were to be transferred to the people's communes.[14]

Melvyn Goldstein reports, regarding the Nyemo incident, the various types of slogans used: in addition to shouting "no more grain sales," "no communes," "freedom for trade," and "all power to the gods," more political slogans also appeared, such as "Tibet is independent".[15] For the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya, this was a nationalist uprising aimed at ridding Tibet of the "oppressor".[16]

The "Nyemo Incident" and the "Buddhist Red Guards" (Melvyn Goldstein)

According to Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Tanzen Lhundrup, after their expulsion from Lhasa, Gyenlo activists shifted to the region of Nyemo, located between Lhasa and Shigatse, where they found support by exploiting peasant discontent over grain production taxes and by advocating the dismantling of the people's communes, all framed in the communist terminology of struggle against the reactionary capitalist line.[17]

According to Melvyn Goldstein, in Nyemo, a former nun, Trinley Chödrön,[18] joined the Gyenlo faction. She declared herself to be possessed by the goddess Ani Gongmey Gyemo, the tutor of the hero in the Epic of King Gesar, after undergoing the ritual of "opening the gates of the veins," while also describing herself as the "right arm of Chairman Mao." While she was motivated by a desire to restore monasteries, for the leaders of the Gyenlo faction she was primarily a means of attracting more supporters. The Gyenlo forces in Nyemo adopted the unofficial name "Army of the Gods of Gyenlo," and the official name "Headquarters of Peasants and Herders." Soon surrounded by around thirty "hero-warriors" claiming to be possessed by figures from the epic of King Gesar, Trinley Chödrön came to be regarded as the goddess Ani Gongmey Gyemo herself.

In June 1969, over the course of three weeks, around thirty people were mutilated (by having their hands or legs cut off) or killed by these "hero-warriors" following Chödrön's instructions: individuals who doubted her supernatural powers, opponents of the Gyenlo order, and people who had harmed the monastic community. These events were followed by the killing of a group of unarmed soldiers and cadres in Bagor district during the anniversary of the "Jokhang massacre." This success encouraged the "Army of the Gods of Gyenlo" to attack a military detachment in the county. However, despite the khatas believed to protect them from bullets, several attackers were killed, while the others retreated in disillusionment. From that point, the movement collapsed: some rebels fled into the mountains to avoid capture by the People's Liberation Army, which had surrounded their headquarters. The nun, who had taken refuge in a cave, was captured. Thirty-four rebels were executed, 28 imprisoned, and 48 placed under public surveillance. Thus ended what Melvyn Goldstein et al. call the "Nyemo Incident".[19]

The "Nyemo uprising" (Kim Yeshi)

According to Kim Yeshi, in opposition to the establishment of the people's communes, Tibetan uprisings broke out, including in Nyemo. The nun Trinley Chödrön and her followers attacked the People's Liberation Army and killed fourteen cadres and soldiers. Chinese authorities observed that Trinley Chödrön's demands targeted "enemies of the faith" rather than the "agents of capitalism," the designated targets of the Cultural Revolution. The rebellion, described as one of "extreme violence," rallied hundreds of supporters and spread to eighteen counties. It was both a reaction to the Cultural Revolution and an expression of Tibetan resistance "to the attacks carried out over a decade against their identity and culture." The Chinese suppressed the revolt; Trinley Chödrön and fifteen of her followers were executed.[20]

"Tibetan nationalist uprising"

According to Ann Riquier, during a wave of Tibetan nationalist uprisings, Trinley Chödrön, who acknowledged leading a rebellion from eastern to western Tibet that gathered 30,000 people, was publicly executed in 1969.[21]

According to a Tibetan who witnessed her execution, the nun Trinley Chödrön, originally from the village of Pusum in Nyemo, was considered an emanation of Labja Gongmo, a sacred bird from the Epic of King Gesar.[22]

"Dismantling of feudal strongholds"

According to the journal Revolutionary Worker, published by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA,[23] the "feudal strongholds" constituted by the thousands of monasteries were emptied and dismantled during a vast mass movement. According to available accounts, this dismantling was carried out almost exclusively by Tibetan serfs themselves, led by revolutionary activists. Religious objects, except for those of significant historical value, were publicly destroyed in order to break centuries-old superstitions. Building materials were redistributed to the population for the construction of homes and roads, and revolutionary armed forces often destroyed the remaining structures. This, according to the journal, was the verdict of the Cultural Revolution regarding monasteries and their class nature: they would no longer live off the suffering of the masses. From this perspective, the dismantling was not "mindless destruction" or "cultural genocide," but rather a conscious political act aimed at the liberation of the people.

Mao, a Religious Icon

According to Wang Lixiong, there is an issue that both the Chinese authorities and Tibetan nationalists strive to conceal: at the height of the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans attacked the temples they had venerated for centuries and tore them apart, rejecting their religion and becoming devotees of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Han occupiers. This episode has since been disavowed by the Chinese Communist Party. For the Tibetans who took part, it is explained by the pressures exerted on them by the Han. As for foreign critics, they refuse to admit that this episode ever took place, unable to imagine that Tibetans could have deliberately done such a thing.[24]

Jean Dif reports a Golok testimony from Amdo: "Tibetans must each morning list the tasks they intend to accomplish during the day before a portrait of Mao. In the evening, they return to report before the portrait on what they have done. Mao has become a religious icon!".[25]

The nun Trinley Chödrön in Nyemo saw in Chairman Mao—of whom she claimed to be the "right arm"—the incarnation of the bodhisattva of wisdom Mañjuśrī.[26]

In 1978, according to Robert Barnett, the policy of liberalization and opening launched by Deng Xiaoping brought an end to the Maoist era: traditional clothing reappeared, monasteries were rebuilt, pilgrimages resumed, and the Tibetan language regained its place. This is what some anthropologists call a "revitalization," or others a "renaissance of Tibetan culture".[27]

In 1980, Hu Yaobang carried out an inspection tour in Tibet.[28] Moderates within the Chinese Communist Party paved the way for increased use of the Tibetan language, the reconstruction of religious buildings (resulting in some regions having more temples today than before 1951), and the encouragement of Tibetan culture.[29]

According to Laurent Deshayes and Frédéric Lenoir, Hu Yaobang's political ousting and subsequent death in 1989 "brought this tentative reform momentum to an end".[30]

According to the journalist Dorothy Stein, while there is evidence showing that a large part of the destruction suffered by religious institutions during the Cultural Revolution was in fact carried out by Red Guards of Tibetan ethnicity, the blame has since been placed on the Chinese, while reinforcing a tendency among Tibetans and their pro-nationalist sympathizers to view events solely in terms of ethnic opposition.[31]

For the Nepalese anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista, who was in Lhasa toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, the destruction was not the work of Chinese but of Tibetans who were part of the Red Guards: former lamas, former monks, and former disciples of various monasteries, who carried out the destruction under the label of the Red Guard.[32]

Tenzin Choedrak, who served as the personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama[33] and was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution,[34][35] states that "from September 1966 onward, in Lhasa as in other camps in Tibet, the Red Guards were all Tibetans. They spoke Chinese perfectly, but all understood our language. Every afternoon, they forced us to read propaganda newspapers".[36]

The journalist Gilles Van Grasdorff highlights the role played by displaced Tibetan children during the events of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: "The children taken between 1951 and 1955 were educated in Maoist communism. Some were among the million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square on August 18, 1966. It was these young Tibetans who would move into Lhasa a few weeks later."

According to the Chinese intellectual and writer[37] [ Wang Lixiong, the majority of the Red Guards who reached the Tibet Autonomous Region were Tibetan students returning from Chinese universities. Due to weak transportation and the vast distances involved, in practice only a small number of Han Red Guards reached Tibet. The fact that they often kept the original name of their organization (for example, the "Capital Red Guards") is one reason they were confused with Han Red Guards. With the gradual return of these Tibetan Red Guards—who often combined their revolutionary activities with visits to their families—the sparks of the Cultural Revolution spread to villages and pastures across the Tibetan plateau, leaving behind a trail of destruction.[38]

The historian Tsering Shakya notes that the Red Guards "felt that Tibet and the Tibetans had to be 'revolutionized,' and saw themselves as advanced revolutionaries coming to help backward students in an underdeveloped region," and that they had a devastating effect on Tibetan culture.[39]

According to Kunsang Paljor (cited by Dawa Norbu), who worked at the Tibet Daily News during the Cultural Revolution, at least 8,130 Chinese Red Guards from 12 educational institutions in mainland China came to Lhasa, and only three Tibetan schools in Lhasa were involved at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.[40]

Red Guards in Tibet

The Red Guards were a student mass paramilitary social movement that were first mobilized between 25 May and 2 June 1966 in China. Soon after meetings were held in order to facilitate the expansion of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet and in August 1966 students began to form the Tibetan branch of the Red Guards.

On August 8, 1966, the decision was issued to start the Cultural Revolution by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Red Guards were dispersed throughout China, at this time Tibet formed their own Red Guard in Lhasa.[41] This began the Cultural Revolution's destruction of Tibetan prayer flags, religious art, and sacred texts. In September 1966, Red Guards from Xianyang and Beijing began to arrive in Lhasa. These guards came from the Tibetan Nationality Institute and joined with local Red Guards to intensify the campaign against the "four olds" and class enemies. Public "struggle sessions" were held by the Red Guards against "reactionaries" or "capitalists", in which people were beaten, and publicly shamed.[42] Zhang Guohua and the Regional Party Committee wanted to minimize the Red Guards' access and criticism of the party leaders. On September 19, 1966, The Red Guards created and distributed big character posters that openly advocated the bombardment of the Regional Party Committee to many counties in Tibet. In November 1966 there was a citywide debate hosted by ten revolutionary organizations; this was to decide whether the Regional Party Committee had been "implementing a bourgeois reactionary line". This in turn divided Lhasa into two factions, both who claimed to be true followers of Mao Zedong, Gyenlo and Nyamdre.[41] The State Council in Beijing once again gave instructions that banned the exchange of revolutionary experiences in Tibet, this was ignored. On December 4, 1966, the State Council announced regulations requiring the Red Guards, who were still in Lhasa, to leave Tibet and return to their own localities by December 20. Beijing Red Guards in Lhasa were given permission to stay by the Central Cultural Revolution Group, headed by, Jiang Qing. Red Guards ousted party leaders and took over their positions. In 1968, Mao sent People's Liberation Army troops into Tibet to gain control. This resulted in a series of public executions. In 1969, the People's Liberation Army disarmed the Red Guards all across China.[42]

Birth of the Tibetan Red Guards

From June 15 to July 5, 1966, the Regional Party Committee under the leadership of Zhang Guohua held meetings to decide how to implement the Cultural Revolution in Tibet.[43] This meeting was used to figure out how the Regional Party Committee, not the local Red Guards or other revolutionary workers and cadres, could control the events to come. The solution to this was for the committee to decide among themselves who was to be sacrificed as a "capitalist roader" or reactionary. Those that were chosen were to be singled out and criticized by the masses. In August 1966 students and teachers at the Lhasa Middle School and the Tibetan Teacher's College began to organize their own Red Guard organization.[43]

Beijing Red Guards

In September 1966 Red Guards from the Tibetan Nationality Institute in Xianyang and Beijing began to arrive in Lhasa. Red Guards were encouraged to travel all over China to spread Mao's thinking and to ensure the "four olds" were being eradicated everywhere. With the arrival of the new Red Guards, the campaign against all thing capitalistic intensified. This began the power struggle between the Regional Party Committee and the Red Guards. Zhang Guohua was granted an order by Zhou Enlai to keep more Han Red Guards from Beijing and other areas from coming to Tibet. This order was ignored and in November 1966 three groups of metropolitan Red Guards arrived in Tibet. With the arrival of the new Red Guards the focus was directly on the party leaders.

Destroying the Four Olds

Many temples in Tibet were destroyed prior to the Cultural Revolution.[44] The temples and monasteries that were left became targets for the Red Guards. In September 1966, Jokhang Temple was destroyed.[41] Red Guards used dynamite and artillery on many of these temples and monasteries, therefore reducing them to rubble. Libraries were also looted, and rare books, Buddhist scripture, and paintings were burned.[45] This was done in private homes as well as the temples and monasteries. Monks could no longer wear their traditional robes but were made to wear blue Mao suits instead.

Gyenlo and Nyamdre

Two factions were formed by the Red Guards in Tibet. These two factions each felt they were the true followers of Mao Zedong. The differences in these two factions stemmed from whether the Regional Party Committee had been "implementing a bourgeois reactionary line" or the "proletarian revolutionary line".[46] The Gyenlo faction published leaflets and publications that spelled out their commitment to rebel against the party leadership. On December 28, in response of Gyenlo, mass organizations that were supportive of the Regional Party Committee joined together to establish the headquarters of Defending Mao Zedong's Thoughts or "Headquarters of Defending" for short. In February 1967, this became the Nyamdre.[47] From May until December 1967 the disagreements between the two factions, Gyenlo and Nyamdre, escalated. The two factions fought armed battles in the streets of Lhasa.

Abuses by Neighborhood Committees and the Red Guards

Based on photographs taken in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution by her father, then an officer in the Chinese army, Tsering Woeser interviewed 70 of the people depicted. She retained 23 testimonies for a book, Forbidden Memory: Testimonies on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, which is unavailable in China and was published in Taiwan. She seeks to understand why temples such as the Jokhang Temple were ransacked by young Red Guards, including Han Chinese but also a majority of Tibetans, coming from Beijing or from high schools in Lhasa. Woeser explains: "The youngest often truly believed in Mao's propaganda. It was effective—and indeed, people all over the world believed in it. But we also realize how many had no choice: they took part because they were afraid, because it was the only way to survive." A Tibetan woman describes how the neighborhood committee gathered the population to go and destroy Buddhist statues, and threatened to remove those who refused from the civil registry or deprive them of ration coupons.[48]

According to Mobo Gao, most of the witnesses interviewed by the writer Tsering Woeser (Wei Se) for her book Forbidden Memory: Testimonies on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet state that it was Tibetan activists from neighborhood committees—not the Red Guards—who caused the greatest damage to religious heritage. These activists were largely from very poor social backgrounds, and some were regarded by certain witnesses as ruffians, thieves, or bandits.[49]

For the Tibetologist Robert Barnett, the involvement of ordinary Tibetans in the sacking of monasteries at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, as indicated by some press articles, is neither a revelation nor the result of investigative journalism.[50]

According to Thomas Laird, the Chinese government encouraged Tibetans to attack the traditional social and religious system of Tibet and to destroy monasteries. Unlike the situation in mainland China—where the Cultural Revolution aimed to root out rightists within the Party who threatened its authority—in Tibet, the Chinese Communist Party prevented the population from turning against it and instead became an instrument of cultural ethnocide.[51]

Laurent Deshayes notes that, in the name of the struggle against the "Four Olds" (old ideas, culture, customs, and habits), a "wave of religious repression" began.[52] The Chinese sociologist Rong Ma adds that conflicts between various revolutionary organizations and their escalation in dismantling the Four Olds in the Tibet Autonomous Region caused significant damage to monasteries and traditional cultural heritage.[53]

According to Kunsang Paljor, who worked at the Tibet Daily during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese Red Guards did not come only with an ideological mission but also to promote the sinicization of Tibetans in the name of Mao Zedong Thought. The Cultural Revolution in Tibet led to a systematic destruction of indigenous cultures and attempts to forcibly impose Han culture on Tibetans. Kunsang Paljor explains that when the Red Guards attacked temples and monasteries in Lhasa, young Chinese participants knew what they wanted to destroy and what they wanted to preserve. All valuable objects from Tsuglak Khang, Ramoche, Norbulingka, Tengyeling, Dzong Kyap Lukhang, and others were carefully packed and prepared for removal. Only then did the Red Guards allow destruction to proceed.[54]

According to Gilles Van Grasdorff, the abuses committed during the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guards against the religious community led to persecution and humiliation, notably through thamzings (public struggle sessions).[55]

According to Pierre-Antoine Donnet, acts of torture included the rape of Tibetan women and even children. Victims were also mutilated—their hands, ears, noses, and tongues cut off—and were sometimes forced to dig their own graves before being executed.[56]

During the Cultural Revolution in Tibetan regions, the tombs of certain great Buddhist masters were desecrated. Thus, the tomb of Tsongkhapa at Ganden Monastery was destroyed by the Red Guards, who forced a Tibetan lama, Bomi Rinpoché, to throw Tsongkhapa's mummy into the fire.[57][58] Likewise, the remains of previous Panchen Lamas were desecrated by the Red Guards.[59]

Photograph from 1993 of a damaged section of the Drepung Monastery.

According to the Tibetan government-in-exile, of the 6,259 monasteries and nunneries that existed across all Tibetan regions, only about eight remained in 1976.[60] According to the International Campaign for Tibet, they were partially or totally destroyed during the 1960s and 1970s.[61][62] Thomas Laird believes that while some monasteries had been destroyed by bombardments during the 1949–1951 invasion and the 1958–1959 rebellion, most were dismantled during the Cultural Revolution.[63][64]

At the beginning of the 1980s, the American journalist Fox Butterfield reported that Chinese officials had informed him that before 1959 there were 2,464 monasteries in Tibet, and that after the Cultural Revolution only ten remained. They notably mentioned that one of them, Ganden Monastery—the third largest, which housed 10,000 monks—had simply disappeared.[65] For its part, the Tibet Mapping Institute states that "If it is said that more than 2,000 monasteries and sacred sites were destroyed by the Red Guards (...), no one can provide a list or locate them on a map. We are still waiting for a Tibetologist to compile a list and description of Tibet's sacred sites".[66]

The Tibetologist Fabienne Jagou disputes these figures and dates, arguing that the number of monasteries still standing in 1966 had already dropped to about a quarter of their 1959 number (i.e., 2,176 to 2,500), and that most of the destruction occurred not during the Cultural Revolution but between 1959 and 1966. She also notes that the figure of 6,254 put forward by Michael van Walt van Praag in 1987 is "now contested".[67]

Examples

According to Pierre-Antoine Donnet, the Jokhang Temple and Ramoche Temple in central Lhasa were among the first targets of the Red Guards. The sacking of the Jokhang began on August 6, 1966.[68] After these two sites, they turned to the Norbulingka, where all the palaces were meticulously looted. The movement spread throughout Lhasa; only the Potala Palace and 13 other religious sites in Tibet were off-limits to the Red Guards, reportedly by order of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, according to later claims by the Chinese government and some Western historians.[69]

Dawa Norbu describes the case of the town of Sakya, where there were 108 monasteries and temples. By 1968, only one remained. The Cultural Revolution there was carried out systematically: first, a few Red Guards arrived and held a meeting with Chinese administrative staff and local progressives (yar-thonpa). Then they toured the town announcing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and rhetorically asked, "Who will volunteer to destroy the centers of superstition?" When most villagers hesitated, a large crowd from another village—Dongka, in this case—came and destroyed most of the famous monasteries. The Chinese authorities also appealed to Tibetans' interest in the wood from monastery structures, which they were allowed to take. Gold, silver, and precious ornaments from statues had been carefully collected by the Cultural Relics Commission before the Red Guards arrived; most informants say they were sent to China.[70]

According to the Tibet Bureau in New York, the famous statue of Jowo Mikyoe Dorjee—venerated since its arrival in Tibet in the 7th century and located in the Ramoche Temple—was dismantled and sent to China during the Cultural Revolution. Its restoration in 1985 was due to Ribur Rinpoché and the 10th Panchen Lama.[71] A 16-meter-high statue of the Buddha, built by the Karma Pakshi in a temple at Tsurphu Monastery in the 13th century—made of bronze and gold and housing relics of Gautama Buddha and some of his disciples—was dynamited by the Red Guards in the 1960s.[72]

As the old Tibet was dismantled, wood and building materials from destroyed monasteries were reused to construct barracks for the People's Liberation Army or housing for Chinese officials in Lhasa. The Chinese Communist Party allowed some temples to be preserved as grain warehouses or headquarters. The clay Buddha statues they contained were smashed or melted in the rain after roofs were torn off. Copper statues were broken and left in heaps, while those made of gold, silver, and bronze were removed and transported to China by truck. In a foundry near Beijing, more than 600 tons of these statues were processed. Most of the cultural heritage disappeared. Tibetan children were even forced to dismantle temples.[73]

According to the Chinese writer Mobo Gao, authorities in Tibet often tried to restrain radical actions; thus, the People's Liberation Army systematically supported the more conservative factions against the rebels. Temples and monasteries survived best in non-peripheral areas and cities where authorities were still more or less able to maintain order. By contrast, Ganden Monastery, located about 60 km from Lhasa and one of the main centers of the Gelug (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism, was reduced to ruins.[74][2] In response to Wang Lixiong, the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya points out that he places the blame on the victim, whereas this mass movement spared no one in Tibet any more than in China.[6]

For the 10th Panchen Lama, it is inaccurate to say that the destructive forces of the Cultural Revolution were directed solely against Tibet or the Tibetan nationality (ethnic group): indeed, the wave of destruction and gratuitous vandalism that affected Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas also affected the entire country and all regions of China's 56 nationalities, including the Han. It is therefore wrong to describe this episode as the total destruction of Tibetan culture by the Chinese.[75]

Attacks on Individuals

Struggle session of Sampho Tsewang Rigzin in Tibet.
Tibetan woman named Rindron, executed for participating in the counter-revolutionary Nyemo uprising during the Cultural Revolution (1969).
Palden Gyatso, July 2000, in France.

The destruction also affected private homes. Prayer flags that adorned the roofs and altars of most Tibetan dwellings were destroyed. Houses were often ransacked, and if "old" Tibetan items were found hidden there—not only religious ones, but also things such as old Tibetan banknotes or traditional clothing—the head of the household was punished.[76]

According to the authors of The Black Book of Communism, the Cultural Revolution is believed to have caused between 400,000 and 1 million deaths across China.[77] According to the Central Tibetan Administration, in Tibet (Ü-Tsang, Amdo, Kham), out of a total of 592,000 monks and nuns, more than 110,000 were reportedly tortured and killed, and 250,000 were forcibly defrocked.[60]

According to Thomas Laird, members of the Tibetan elite who had been used by the Chinese authorities during the 1950s and 1960s were stigmatized by the Red Guards during thamzing (struggle sessions or self-criticism sessions), where they were beaten and tortured; those who did not die were imprisoned. The Tibetan government-in-exile estimates that 92,000 Tibetans died during these sessions.[78]

During the Cultural Revolution, Ribur Rinpoché was subjected to 35 "struggle sessions" before crowds of 30 to 400 people. Usually in the evening, between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. after work, he had to wear a long pointed hat and his monk's robe to signify his "bad class status." Various badges and religious objects were attached to him to ridicule him, and he was paraded through the market of Lhasa, accompanied by trumpets, gongs, and the jeers of the Red Guards. His accuser, a Chinese official named Guo Xianzhi, head of the Lhasa district, accused him of secret contacts with the Dalai Lama, with "foreign reactionaries," and of wanting to create a movement for Tibetan independence. He had to appear before the public with his hands on the ground and head bowed, and was then beaten and criticized. On one occasion, he was struck on the right ear with a rifle butt and has had impaired hearing ever since.[79]

In his 1990 book Tibet: Dead or Alive, Pierre-Antoine Donnet writes: "In the absence of verifiable figures, it seems evident to a foreign observer that hundreds of thousands of Tibetans disappeared, victims of unnatural deaths, during the Cultural Revolution".[80]

In November 1970, Palden Gyatso witnessed public executions, which he describes with horror in his autobiography. He was taken, along with hundreds of other Tibetans, from prisons in Lhasa to Drapchi Prison to attend an annual "rewards and punishments" meeting. Guards pulled from the ranks those prisoners who were to be executed—bound and gagged, with heavy wooden plaques engraved with Chinese characters hanging around their necks. Palden Gyatso was forced to step forward near Kundaling Kusang, a well-known Tibetan woman whose face was swollen and covered in bruises, barely able to breathe, and who was accused of counter-revolutionary activities aimed at overthrowing the proletarian dictatorship. She, along with 14 other Tibetans, was forced to kneel before a pit near Sera Monastery and was shot by a firing squad; those who survived the first volley were finished off with point-blank shots. Families were later informed through a bill indicating the number of bullets used and the length of rope used to bind the victims. In 1971, Palden Gyatso witnessed three more death sentences; one of the prisoners was accused solely of having scratched a portrait of Mao Zedong—an incident that led to a presumption of guilt and ultimately to his execution.[81]

Tibetan Medicine

According to Craig R. Janes, during the Cultural Revolution many Tibetan doctors were labeled as "class enemies." They were subjected to particularly harsh treatment, sent to labor camps, and forbidden to practice medicine. By 1973, Tibetan medicine had almost completely disappeared.[82]

According to Mona Schrempf, Tibetan medicine continued to be taught and practiced during the Cultural Revolution, but under compromised conditions: private practice and instruction were eliminated or carried out only in secret, while formal education was stripped of its links to religious practice and medical theory. During this period, the generation of Tibetan doctors trained in state institutions did not have access to education in the traditional Tibetan medical system—a fact that still affects current generations of students.[83]

According to Yeshi Donden, the removal of the spiritual aspects of the medical tradition continued at least until 1989.[84]

Famine

According to Pierre-Antoine Donnet, famine reappeared in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. In central Tibet, by 1970 there were more than 1,000 people's communes, each grouping 100 to 200 families. By December 1995, there were around 2,000 across nearly all counties of central Tibet (Ü-Tsang). Within these communes, Chinese cadres imposed the cultivation of wheat and annual cropping, whereas Tibetans traditionally grew barley—better suited to the fragile soils of the Tibetan plateau—and alternated harvest years with fallow years to allow the land to recover. This led to soil exhaustion, poor harvests, and a significant decline in grain production, depleting what had been Tibet's grain reserves before 1950 and causing new severe famines in some regions. This situation was worsened by the war preparations initiated by Mao Zedong in the late 1960s. The Chinese army was given priority in grain distribution, even in Tibet, where several hundred thousand soldiers were stationed along the borders with India. In addition, the Chinese government sent tens of thousands of Chinese settlers to Tibet during the Cultural Revolution; in central Tibet, large-scale migration effectively began around 1975.[85]

According to the Tibetan Youth Congress, toward the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, tens of thousands of Tibetans died of hunger in Ü-Tsang due to overcultivation of land planted with wheat.[86]

According to testimony by Gyeten Namgyal, during the Cultural Revolution, those without work simply died of starvation.[87]

Impunity

According to Tsering Shakya, unlike in mainland China—where the Chinese Communist Party purged individuals responsible for crimes committed during the Cultural Revolution—this did not occur in Tibet, despite calls from figures such as the 10th Panchen Lama. In 1984, in his speech at the Second Tibet Work Forum, Hu Yaobang mentioned demands for the expulsion of such individuals; however, they instead received promotions, with promises that they could be reformed. For Tsering Shakya, the Chinese Communist Party was unable to find other trustworthy individuals to govern Tibet, with China facing there the kinds of problems typical of a colonial power.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Marie-Claire Bergère, China from 1949 to the Present Day, 2000, p. 119.
  2. 1 2 3 Wang, Lixiong. "Reflections on Tibet". New Left Review. most of the Red Guards who did reach the TAR were Tibetan students, returning from universities elsewhere.
  3. ↑ Stein, Dorothy (1995). People Who Count: Population and Politics, Women and Children. London: Earthscan Publications. p. 186. Although there is evidence that much of the destruction of religious institutions during the Cultural Revolution was in fact actually carried out by Red Guards of Tibetan ethnicity, it has since been laid entirely at the Chinese door.
  4. ↑ Donnet, Pierre-Antoine (1990). Tibet: Survival in Question. p. 133. The dictator's henchmen undertook, starting in 1966, the systematic, methodical, calculated, planned, and total destruction of Tibetan civilization.
  5. ↑ Gao, Mobo C. F. (2008). Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. p. 24. The authorities in Tibet often tried to restrain radical actions, with the PLA for example consistently supporting the more conservative factions against the rebels. Temples and monasteries survived best in the central areas and cities where the authorities could still exercise some control.
  6. 1 2 3 Shakya, Tsering (28 November 2002). "Tibet Under the Boot". Courrier International.
  7. ↑ Donnet, Pierre-Antoine (1990). Tibet: Survival in Question. Zed Books.
  8. 1 2 Woeser. Forbidden Memory: Testimonies on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Translated by Li Zhang and Bernard Bourrit. Gallimard. p. 552.
  9. ↑ Yeshi, Kim (2009). Tibet: A History. Yale University Press.
  10. ↑ Berounsky, Daniel (1 December 2009). "Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident in 1969 by Melvyn C. Goldstein, Jiao Ben, and Lhundrup Tanzen". Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines. 40. Retrieved 22 July 2011. To outline the series of events presented: During the Cultural Revolution, various groups of followers of Mao's instructions formed into two opposing factions in Lhasa in 1968. The first of them was called Nyamdre (Tib. mnyam 'brel, perhaps "Alliance") and the second Gyenlo (Tib. gyen log, "Rebels"). The first of them might be labeled conservative, since it often supported the existing officials of that time, with the explanation that the situation in Tibet required special treatment. The second faction, Gyenlo, was initiated by traveling Red Guards from inland China who felt the need to struggle against certain officials, following Mao's statement about the "bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, government, army and all cultural circles". The third force, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), was restricted from involvement in the emerging struggle.
  11. ↑ Goldstein, Melvyn C.; Jiao, Ben; Tanzen, Lhundrup (2009). On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. p. 44.
  12. ↑ Yeshi, Kim (2009). Tibet: A History. Yale University Press.
  13. ↑ Daniel Berounsky, "Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident in 1969", Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, vol. 40, 1 December 2009: "The first violent conflict between the Nyamdre and Gyenlo factions occurred in Lhasa in June 1968. The PLA did not follow the rule of non-intervention in this exceptional case and attacked two strongholds of the Gyenlo faction: the Financial Compound and the Jokhang Temple. The attack resulted in the death of twelve Gyenlo activists and two soldiers."
  14. ↑ Woeser, Forbidden Memory: Testimonies on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, translated by Li Zhang and Bernard Bourrit, Gallimard, 2010; Wang Lixiong, Reflections on the Tibetan Question, pp. 487 ff.
  15. ↑ Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Lhundrup Tanzen, On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969, University of California Press, 2009, p. 169.
  16. ↑ "Response to Wang Lixiong: Tibet Under the Boot", Courrier International, 1 October 2003.
  17. ↑ Daniel Berounsky, "Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident in 1969", Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, vol. 40, 1 December 2009: "After the conflict, the Gyenlo activists started to intensify their search for support in rural areas. One of them was Nyemo (Snye mo), located between Lhasa and Shigatse (Gzhi ka rtse), in Tsang (Gtsang). Although originally most of the local people from Nyemo supported the Nyamdre faction, and at the same time somehow the status quo, Gyenlo made use of the general discontent of the local people concerning the production taxes hidden behind euphemistic names such as 'patriotic government grain' and 'sales grain.' In particular, the second tax impoverished farmers: the tax was fixed as a portion of yields, and kept increasing largely due to exaggerated yields, which were meant to demonstrate 'socialist progress.' The promise of a suspension of the grain taxes on the part of Gyenlo and at the same time dismantling the people's communes found fertile ground in Nyemo and apparently also in other rural areas. Such promises were of course officially formulated in communist terminology as a struggle against the 'reactionary capitalist line.'"
  18. ↑ Born in 1938 and died in 1969, at the age of 31.
  19. ↑ Daniel Berounsky, "Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident in 1969", Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, vol. 40, 2009.
  20. ↑ Kim Yeshi, Tibet: A History, Yale University Press, 2009.
  21. ↑ Ann Riquier, "Tibet: Female Resistance".
  22. ↑ Gyatso, Janet; Havnevik, Hanna (2005). Women in Tibet. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 163. ISBN 9781850656531.
  23. ↑ "The True Story of Maoist Revolution in Tibet: Red Guards and People's Communes". Revolutionary Worker. 17 April 1994. (...) In a huge mass movement, the many monasteries of Tibet were emptied and physically dismantled.
  24. ↑ Wang, Lixiong (March–April 2002). "Reflections on Tibet". New Left Review. In the current debate on Tibet the two opposing sides see almost everything in black and white—differing only as to which is which. But there is one issue that both Chinese authorities and Tibetan nationalists consistently strive to blur or, better still, avoid altogether. At the height of the Cultural Revolution hundreds of thousands of Tibetans turned upon the temples they had treasured for centuries and tore them to pieces, rejected their religion and became zealous followers of the Great Han occupier, Mao Zedong. To the Chinese Communist Party, the episode is part of a social catastrophe—one that it initiated but has long since disowned and which, it hopes, the rest of the world will soon forget. For the Tibetan participants, the memory of that onslaught is a bitter humiliation, one they would rather not talk about, or which they try to exorcise with the excuse that they only did it 'under pressure from the Han'. Foreign critics simply refuse to accept that the episode ever took place, unable to imagine that the Tibetans could willingly and consciously have done such a thing. But careful analysis and a deeper reflection on what was involved in that trauma may shed light on some of the cultural questions at stake on the troubled High Plateau.
  25. ↑ Dif, Jean. "Chronology of the History of Tibet and Its Relations with the Rest of the World".
  26. ↑ Daniel Berounsky, "Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident in 1969", Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, vol. 40, 2009.
  27. ↑ Barnett, Robert (2002). "A City, Its Visitors and the Odour of Development". In Pommaret, Françoise (ed.). Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century: The Capital of the Dalai Lama. Translated by Howard Solverson. London; Boston; Köln: Brill. pp. 207–208. the 1978 decision of Deng Xiaoping to launch a policy referred to by the Chinese as "liberation and opening up". That policy officially ended the Maoist era and the persecution of Tibetan culture, religion or class difference that Mao had unleashed. Traditional costume was reintroduced, monasteries were rebuilt, Tibetan language was reinstalled, pilgrimages recommenced. Among anthropologists, some have described this as a revitalisation; others speak of it as a renaissance of Tibetan culture.
  28. ↑ Deshayes, Laurent (1997). History of Tibet. Fayard. p. 352. ISBN 9782213595023.
  29. ↑ Grunfeld, A. Tom (12 October 2005). "Reassessing Tibet Policy". Foreign Policy in Focus. During the 1980s, CCP moderates paved the way for increased usage of the Tibetan language, the reconstruction of religious buildings (with more temples in some regions now than before 1951), and the encouragement of Tibetan culture.
  30. ↑ Deshayes, Laurent; Lenoir, Frédéric (2002). The Epic of the Tibetans: Between Myth and Reality. Fayard. ISBN 9782213610283.
  31. ↑ Stein, Dorothy (1995). People Who Count: Population and Politics, Women and Children. London: Earthscan Publications. p. 186. Although there is evidence that much of the destruction of religious institutions during the Cultural Revolution was in fact actually carried out by Red Guards of Tibetan ethnicity, it has since been laid entirely at the Chinese door, and the tendency of Tibetans and their pro-nationalist supporters to think only in ethnic terms has hardened.
  32. ↑ Fisher, James F. (1997). "An Interview with Dor Bahadur Bista". Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. 17 (1): 28. when things in Lhasa were destroyed, it wasn't the Chinese destroying Tibetan things — Tibetan members of the Red Guard were doing it! There were former lamas, former monks, former disciples of these various monasteries themselves destroying this under the Red Guard.
  33. ↑ "The Art of Tibetan Medicine". The Washington Post. 26 October 1998.
  34. ↑ "Statement by Dr. Tenzin Choedrak before US Congress". 8 May 1996.
  35. ↑ "Victim of Chinese Torture in Tibet".
  36. ↑ Gilles Van Grasdorff, The New History of Tibet, Perrin, 2006, p. 419 (reporting a private conversation with Tenzin Choedrak).
  37. ↑ Wang Lixiong, un intellectuel atypique
  38. ↑ Wang, Lixiong (March–April 2002). "Reflections on Tibet". New Left Review (14). The truth is that, because of poor transportation and the huge distances involved, only a limited number of Han Red Guards actually reached Tibet. Even if some of them did participate in pulling down the temples, their action could only have been symbolic. Hundreds of shrines were scattered in villages, pastures and on rugged mountainsides: no one would have been capable of destroying them without the participation of the local people. Furthermore, most of the Red Guards who did reach the TAR were Tibetan students, returning from universities elsewhere. The fact that they often retained their organizations' original names — Capital Red Guards, for instance — is one reason for the confusion over this. With the gradual return of these Tibetan Red Guards—who often combined their revolutionary work with visits to their families—the sparks of the Cultural Revolution spread across villages and pastures over the entire Tibetan plateau; followed by the rampage of destruction.
  39. ↑ Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove Press, 2007.
  40. ↑ Norbu, 1998, pp. 273–274: "Kunsang Paljor, who was then working for The Tibet Daily News, says that as many as 8,130 Chinese Red Guards from twelve educational institutions in China proper came to Lhasa and only three Tibetan schools in Lhasa were involved at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution."
  41. 1 2 3 Goldstein, Melvyn. On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969.
  42. 1 2 "After 50 years, Tibetans Recall the Cultural Revolution". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2017-02-12.
  43. 1 2 "The Cultural Revolution in Tibet" (PDF). ucpress.edu. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  44. ↑ Barnett, Robert, and Shirin Akiner. Resistance and reform in Tibet. Motilal Banarsidass Published, 1996.
  45. ↑ "Revisiting the "Cultural Revolution" in Tibet". Central Tibetan Administration. 2016-10-31. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
  46. ↑ "Victory for the Proletarian Revolutionary Line Represented by Chairman Mao". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  47. ↑ Goldstein, Melvyn. On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969.
  48. ↑ Pedroletti, Brice (25 December 2010). ""Forbidden Memory": Ten Years of Night in Tibet". Le Monde. Thus, a Tibetan woman interviewed by the writer, named Juejig, recounts how the neighborhood committee gathered the population to destroy the Buddhas, and threatened to remove those who resisted from the civil registry or deprive them of ration tickets.
  49. ↑ Gao, Mobo (2008). The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. p. 27. The majority of the interviewees, when questioned, affirm that it was the Tibetan activists of the neighbourhood committees, not the Red Guards, who did most of the damage in religious destruction. These activists were mostly from poor social backgrounds and some of them were considered by some interviewees to be rascals, thieves and thugs.
  50. ↑ Barnett, Robert (2006). "Beyond the Collaborator-Martyr Model: Strategies of Compliance, Opportunism, and Opposition within Tibet". In Sautman, Barry; Dreyer, June Teufel (eds.). Contemporary Tibet: Politics, Development, and Society in a Disputed Region. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 25–66. Note 22. Some journalistic reports point to the involvement of ordinary Tibetans in the sacking of the monasteries in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution as if this were a revelation or an exposé (see for example, Wong 1994), but this only reveals that the journalists had adopted the binary collaborator-martyr model.
  51. ↑ Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove Press, 2007, pp. 349–350.
  52. ↑ Laurent Deshayes, History of Tibet, Fayard, 1997, p. 348, ISBN 978-2213595023.
  53. ↑ Ma, Rong (2010). Population and Society in Tibet. Hong Kong University Press. p. 158. The following internecine struggles among various revolutionary organizations and their competition to break down the Four Olds in the TAR caused much damage to monasteries and to traditional cultural heritage (Grunfeld, 1996:183–186).
  54. ↑ Norbu, 1998, pp. 273–274: "It appears that these Chinese Red Guards came not only with an ideological mission but also with a Han-man's burden in Tibet – the sinicization of Tibetans in the name of Mao Zedong Thought. [...] The Cultural Revolution in Tibet is one of systematic destruction of indigenous cultures and forced attempts to impose Han culture on the unwilling Tibetans in the name of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. [...] When the Red Guards went on a spree of attacking temples and monasteries in Lhasa, Kunsang Paljor says that it was clear that the Chinese youths knew what to destroy and what to save. All the valuable contents of such temples as Tsuglak Khang, Ramoche, Norbulingka, Tengyelling, Zong Kyap Lukhang, etc. were neatly packed, ready to be carted away to some 'safer' place. Only then were the Red Guards let loose to destroy."
  55. ↑ Gilles van Grasdorff, Panchen Lama: Hostage of Beijing (with Edgar Tag), preface by Louis de Broissia and Claude Huriet, Ramsay, 1999, pp. 233 ff.
  56. ↑ Pierre-Antoine Donnet, Tibet: Dead or Alive, Paris, Gallimard (Folio/Actuel), 1992, p. 132.
  57. ↑ "Death of a Controversial Lama: Obituary of Bomi Rinpoche (1918–2002)". World Tibet Network News. November 2002.
  58. ↑ Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove Press, 2007.
  59. ↑ Kristof, Nicholas D. (30 January 1989). "The Panchen Lama Is Dead at 50; Key Figure in China's Tibet Policy". The New York Times.
  60. 1 2 "Tibet: Proving Truth from Facts" (PDF). Department of Information and International Relations, Central Tibetan Administration. 1996. pp. 84–85. Out of Tibet's total of 6,259 monasteries and nunneries only about eight remained by 1976. Among those destroyed were the seventh century Samye, the first monastery in Tibet; Gaden, the earliest and holiest monastic university of the Gelugpas; Sakya, the main seat of the Sakyas; Tsurphu, one of the holiest monasteries of the Kagyuds; Mindroling, one of the most famous monasteries of the Nyingmapas; Menri, the earliest and most sacred Bon monastery, etc.
  61. ↑ "Monastic Education in the Gönpa". Tibetan Culture. More than 6,000 monasteries in Tibet were destroyed in the 1960s and 1970s following the Chinese invasion of Tibet.
  62. ↑ "Religion and Culture". International Campaign for Tibet. Approximately 6,000 monasteries, nunneries and temples, and their contents were partially or fully destroyed from the period of the Chinese invasion and during the Cultural Revolution.
  63. ↑ Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove Press, 2007, pp. 349–350.
  64. ↑ Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, Grove Press, 2007: "Although some monasteries had been destroyed following aerial bombardments and military attacks in eastern Tibet during the 1949–1951 invasion, and the 1958–1959 rebellion, most had survived until the 1960s. Under the watchful eye of Tibetan and Chinese Red Guards, those that remained standing were systematically dismantled during the now infamous Cultural Revolution."
  65. ↑ Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1983, p. 309.
  66. ↑ "Tibet Mapping Project". Institut de cartographie du Tibet.
  67. ↑ Jagou, Fabienne (2001). "Religious Policy of China in Tibet". Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest. 32 (1): 29–54.
  68. ↑ Pierre-Antoine Donnet, Tibet: Survival in Question, 1990, p. 126.
  69. ↑ Pierre-Antoine Donnet, Tibet: Survival in Question, 1990, pp. 127–128.
  70. ↑ Norbu, 1998, pp. 271–272.
  71. ↑ "Ribur Rinpoche Is No More, His Story Remains with Us". Phayul.
  72. ↑ Kunsang, Lama; Aubèle, Marie (2011). The Odyssey of the Karmapas: The Great History of the Black Hat Lamas. Albin Michel. p. 60. ISBN 9782226221506.
  73. ↑ Laird, Thomas (2007). The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove Press. pp. 349–350.
  74. ↑ Gao, Mobo C. F. (2008). Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. p. 24. The authorities in Tibet often tried to restrain radical actions, with the PLA for example consistently supporting the more conservative factions against the rebels. Temples and monasteries survived best in the central areas and cities where the authorities could still exercise some control. In contrast, the Gandan Monastery, some 60 kilometres outside Lhasa and one of the three major centres of the Yellow Hat sect, was reduced to ruins.
  75. ↑ Tenth Panchen Lama (20 February 1991). "The Panchen Lama's Last Speech: Full Text". World Tibet Network News. Tibet Information Network. Retrieved 27 April 2026. However, it is inappropriate to say that the destructive forces of the "Cultural Revolution" was directed solely against Tibet or against the Tibetan nationality because the spate of wanton destruction and vandalism that took place in Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas also took place all over the country at the national level and in all the areas of the 56 Nationalities including the Chinese, during the Cultural Revolution. It is all the more wrong to describe the event as the complete destruction of Tibetan culture by the Chinese because it is hard to justify the argument that the Chinese are responsible for the catastrophe and the complete destruction of a culture that is a part of the Chinese culture.
  76. ↑ Norbu, Dawa (1998). Tibet: The Road Ahead. Rider. p. 275.
  77. ↑ Stéphane Courtois; Nicolas Werth; Jean-Louis Panné; Andrzej Paczkowski; Karel Bartošek; Jean-Louis Margolin, eds. (1997). Le Livre noir du communisme : crimes, terreur, répression (in French). Paris: Robert Laffont. p. 561.
  78. ↑ Laird, Thomas (2007). The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove Press.
  79. ↑ Donnet, Pierre-Antoine (1990). Tibet: Survival in Question. pp. 129–130.
  80. ↑ Donnet, Pierre-Antoine (1990). Tibet: Survival in Question. p. 143.
  81. ↑ Gyatso, Palden. Fire Under the Snow. pp. 192–197.
  82. ↑ Tibet: Human Rights and the Rule of Law. Geneva: International Commission of Jurists. December 1997. p. 128.
  83. ↑ Schrempf, Mona (2007). Soundings in Tibetan Medicine: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. Brill. p. 135. ISBN 9789004155503. Tibetan medicine continued to be taught and practised during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, under compromised circumstances: private practice and instruction were suppressed or only pursued secretly, while sanctioned education was stripped of links to religious practice and to medical theory (Adams 2002). This has meant that a generation of amchi educated at state institutions during this time were denied a full gso ba rig pa education — a fact that bears on current generations of students.
  84. ↑ Donden, Yeshi (2000). Healing from the Source: The Science and Lore of Tibetan Medicine. with B. Alan Wallace. Snow Lion Publications. p. 80. ISBN 1559391480.
  85. ↑ Donnet, Pierre-Antoine (1990). Tibet: Survival in Question. p. 140.
  86. ↑ TYC, Development for Whom? A Report on the Chinese Development Strategies in Tibet and Their Impacts, Dharamsala, 1995.
  87. ↑ Kim Yeshi, Tibet: A History, Yale University Press, 2009.

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