Military occupation and genocide in Tibet

China invaded Tibet in 1950. After crushing all resistance, a systematic campaign was launched to destroy the Tibetan people and their way of life. This movement reached its crescendo during the Cultural Revolution, but continues to this day, in varying degrees of violence and severity. According to the latest estimates over six thousand monasteries, temples and historical monuments have been destroyed, along with incalculably vast quantities of priceless artistic and religious objects and countless books and manuscripts of Tibet's unique and ancient learning. Over a million Tibetans have been killed by execution, torture and starvation, while hundreds of thousands of others have been forced to slave in remote and desolate forced labor camps.

In spite of the Dalai Lama's many concessions and repeated efforts to negotiate on the question of Tibet, Chinese leaders have rejected all his overtures. Beijing's declared strategy now is to wait until the Dalai Lama dies, after which it is confident that the Tibetan issue could be terminated without international outcry. To ensure this, Beijing has adopted a policy of escalating Chinese population transfer to Tibet, deliberate subversion of Tibetan culture and identity, and the demoralization of Tibetans through unemployment, inferior educational opportunities, and unrelenting and ruthless repression of the Tibetan people by the organs of state security. In the last year, political repression has taken on new rigor with more arrests, torture, executions and vastly increased deployment of informers and security personnel throughout the country, especially in urban areas.

Though such measures have been successful in suppressing large scale-demonstrations and the kind of violent "independence" riots that broke out all over Tibet, especially in Lhasa, the capital city, in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, they have been unable to contain public protests by
individuals and small groups (especially young nuns). More disturbing for State Security is the rise of bombing incidents in Tibet. These started in the mid-eighties with random and often harmless explosions of crude pipe bombs, but which now seems to be gaining in technical sophistication and political determination, as evinced by the case of a suicide bomber who disrupted a major official sports ceremony in Lhasa in 1999.

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