The Tightening Yoke

Little news trickles out of the mountain-ringed jail that the Red Chinese have made of Tibet, and no reporters are allowed in. Eleven months ago, a nine-man committee of the International Commission of Jurists began sifting through Red Chinese documents and broadcasts, intelligence reports and refugee interrogations in an effort to separate fact from rumor, discover what was really going on. Last week their report was in. The committee could not be charged with prejudice: eight of its nine members were from Asian or African countries of neutralist leanings.

Since crushing the Tibetan rebellion last year, the committee reported, the Red Chinese have made their chief goal an effort to separate the Tibetan people from their Buddhist religion. In pursuit of this policy, the Chinese have ruthlessly "killed religious figures, because their religious belief and practice was an encouragement and example to others. They also have forcibly transferred large numbers of Tibetan children to a Chinese materialist environment in order to prevent them from having a religious upbringing." The Dalai Lama told the commissioners that his information showed that more than 10,000 Tibetan children, some as young as age six, had been torn away from their parents, given numbers and sent to China.

The jurists coldly dismissed the Reds' claim that they had "liberated" the Tibetan people from oppressive overlords. Although Tibet was a feudal society before the Red Chinese came, the jurists found that its people were thoroughly happy. Never had there been an instance of Tibetan popular uprising. It was also untrue that China had improved the condition of the Tibetan masses, said the investigators. The considerable economic and industrial development that has taken place was all "directly related" to the needs of the half-million Chinese settled in Tibet. The poor Tibetans had only grown poorer.

Friendship's End. As if to dramatize the jurists' measured account, last week a new spate of refugees poured across the border into India. Among the latecomers was one Thondup Lowazang, 27, who until a few weeks ago had been deputy commander of 100 Chinese troops in the Shigatse area. A longtime Communist even before the Chinese marched in, Thondup had been happy to show the Chinese how to handle his own people until he saw the village of Kimrimchogor, once home to 700 families, reduced by bombing and firing squad to 20 individuals because it was suspected of harboring guerrillas. Then Thondup decided he had had enough. All pretenses of Chinese-Tibetan friendship are now over, said he. "A crime for which a Chinese would get seven days earns a Tibetan seven years."

Other refugees reported that Lhasa, the capital, is now three-quarters Chinese. Around the city is a ring of new Chinese barracks, where fresh troops arrive daily. For disciplinary purposes, the outnumbered and cowed Tibetans are organized into neighborhood groups, each with a section leader who reports directly to the Chinese any complaining or malingering.

Defiled Altars. Chinese officials loll on the Dalai Lama's throne, put their feet on Buddhist altars and flip cigarettes into the sanctuaries. Younger monks are encouraged to flout their vows of chastity. Those who persist in their faith are locked into their own monastic cells, and their" Communist jailers taunt them: "Ask your God to feed you." When they have been starved long enough to get the point, they are served a sumptuous banquet of "Communist food." Any who are still not brainwashed are put into shackles, forced to work on the roads. Lamas with individual fortunes are put on trial in revolutionary people's courts, sentenced to be flogged by their former tenants. If a tenant holds back, he himself is shot.

There was little chance that Tibet could throw off the massive yoke fastened by their Chinese occupiers. But some were still trying. Serious fighting has been reported for the past two weeks in central Tibet, north of Mount Everest. At Shekar, Tibetans claimed, a Chinese garrison was overwhelmed. Last week fresh outbreaks were reported in western Tibet at Parkha, with the Chinese moving in to reinforce the garrison against guerrilla attacks.

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