In Exile From the Land of Snows (43 page)

The land reform materialized in full during November 1960 in the form of 200,000 deeds, written mainly in Chinese, and sporting a portrait of Chairman Mao flanked by red flags. These were distributed in grand ceremonies to the peasant class and those below—beggars and mendicants,
often old or crippled, who knew nothing of farming and had no desire to pursue it. As Ngabo Ngawang Jigme said, summarizing the achievements of the Democratic Reforms at the National People’s Congress in Peking a few months earlier: “The class consciousness of the broad masses of peasants and herdsmen has been greatly elevated; they say, ‘The sun of the Kashag [the Cabinet] shone only on three big manorial lords and their landlord henchmen, but the sun of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao shines on us—the poor people.’ They warmly sing praises: ‘Chairman Mao is the father of the various nationalities of our motherland and is closer to us than our own parents.’ They say, ‘Reactionary elements of the upper strata spoke the same language as we did, but their hearts were different from ours; the Han cadres speak a language different from ours, but their hearts are the same as ours.’ ”

Class struggle was the crucible in which the order of the future was to be forged. Its fuel, the fire which burned away the old and gave birth to the new, was
thamzing
or struggle session. Through it the “broad masses” would emancipate themselves by making their own people’s revolution. In practice, this meant setting workers against employers, peasants against landlords, monks against abbots, students against teachers, and children against parents. Those who held positions of authority in society were automatically seen to possess them, not on the basis of merit, but through having usurped their place, with the support of others of like kind, for the sole purpose of oppressing the people. Despite admonishments from the United Front Work Department and the Nationalities Affairs Commission in Peking to respect minorities and to nurture unity between the many peoples of China, the reality in Tibet was unremittingly racist; Chinese occupation troops were unable to relinquish their millennia-old view of the Tibetans as barbarians. As Communists, they marshaled ideology in support of this prejudice, depicting the government as “dark, feudal and cruel,” the monks as “red robbers” or “insects” sucking the blood of the people. But the “people” themselves were physically repugnant to the average Chinese in Tibet: dirty, dark, smelling of yak butter and altogether barbarously free in their behavior, they were poor material from which to fashion willfully self-regimented proletarian masses. All of this served to nourish the dedication with which
thamzing
was carried out, while to Tibetans
thamzing
was made all the more repugnant by the condescension of the Han, who prefaced every round of punishment and bloodshed with the prim assertion that what was to follow lay solely in the victim’s best interest.

By the end of July 1959
thamzing
was well underway in Lhasa. It occurred periodically within the framework of the daily “political education”
meeting, held by every block committee for the hundred to two hundred people under its jurisdiction. In their more quiescent form, these meetings, conducted in abandoned monasteries and in the courtyards of large houses, served as mere platforms for propaganda designed to heighten class consciousness. A common question at the start was: “What is oppression and deception?” The correct reply: “The old society.”

Much of the reeducation in 1959 focused on the Dalai Lama. As they maintained to the world, the Chinese in Tibet announced to Tibetans that the Dalai Lama had been kidnapped by reactionaries. Due to the utter lack of external news, various wild rumors abounded. In some renditions, he was said to have hidden in a forest for ten days, whereafter he was captured by the PLA and freed from his abductors. In Shigatse it was announced that though the Dalai Lama had indeed been kidnapped and taken to “Pandit Nehru’s country,” India could not feed him or his party, as its people were already dying of famine by the millions. Nehru was said to have given the Tibetan leader a job on board a ship but he could not earn enough to support himself. As a result, the Chinese consulate in Calcutta had fed him for twenty-one days, then flown him to Peking, where he now lived with Mao Zedong and the Panchen Lama, “sharing the same meals with them and enjoying equal status.” It was just then being arranged for the Dalai Lama to remain in Peking while Mao himself would come to Tibet to take his place. Finally, the populace was assured that any thought of escape to India was futile, as those who had fled were not only starving but were soon to be transported back to Tibet by Nehru himself.

Thamzing
, while equally fanciful, was a carefully orchestrated undertaking, much like a collective Passion play.
Thamzing
proper took place with the people seated on the ground before a tribunal of Chinese officials ensconced behind a table. An opening speech was made by the ranking Chinese. In it the people were informed that
thamzing
was not a matter of one or two meetings, but would continue until a full confession, followed by repentance, had been obtained—until the accused himself, “with the help of his revolutionary brothers,” had cleansed his mind of reactionary thoughts. Furthermore, it was designed to teach the “serfs” to stand up, unafraid of their masters, and expose past injustices. On this dramatic note—with the official gesturing angrily and yelling, “Bring that bad person in!”—the prisoner would be led to the head of the crowd, and made to bend over from the waist, hands on knees, eyes to the ground. A list of crimes was then read from the charge sheets, the official saying at the conclusion: “These are the crimes committed by this person. It is now for the people to help him admit his evil ways and decide the punishment he should receive.” At this signal the first accuser, invariably an “activist” in
Chinese employ, would spring up, race forward, and denounce the “exploiter,” by yelling such epithets as “Kill the stinking dog! Skin him alive! Your mother’s corpse! Your father’s heart! Confess your crimes!” After recounting the supposed suffering he had been subjected to, the witness would beat the victim, rebels often being thrashed by their guards with the butt end of a rifle. In these cases, it would frequently be the task of those at the meeting to execute the victim, not, however, before suggestions were elicited as to the best means. Burying alive, wrapping the accused in a blanket and setting it on fire, suspending him from a tree and lighting a bonfire beneath, hanging, beheading, disemboweling, scalding, crucifixion, quartering, stoning to death by the whole group, small children being forced to shoot their parents—all these methods were suggested (by collaborators) and subsequently employed, as reported in case after case to the International Commission of Jurists. In the first year alone after the revolt’s suppression, thousands of Tibetans died as a result of
thamzing
, while many more were permanently maimed, losing, in part, their teeth, hearing or eyesight.

Following this basic pattern,
thamzing
was conducted throughout Tibet in one of three forms: small, medium and large. Small
thamzings
were often spontaneous, occurring during regular reeducation meetings when someone gave the wrong answer to a question—and thus exposed himself as having an “old,” “green” or “unripe” mind. Medium-size
thamzings
involved one person being “struggled” for weeks at a time in large neighborhood or multi-village meetings. Large
thamzings
were a step below formal public executions. In Lhasa, the first of them began on July 26, 1959, nine days after the Democratic Reforms were announced. Lhalu Tsewang Dorje, the Cabinet minister who had organized the defense of Kham before relinquishing it to Ngabo just prior to the invasion, had been captured during the uprising and was accused of being one of its chief perpetrators—which, of course, he was. Interrogated and beaten in the maximum-security prison located inside Silingpu, the PLA’s headquarters, he was chosen as a prime example of past corruption and paraded through Lhasa receiving multiple beatings in front of huge crowds, before eventually being thrown back in jail, to be kept alive for future propaganda campaigns. Less important figures, though, came off worse, such as a sixty-year-old nun named Gyanisha Anila, who was marched through the Barkhor on October 21 while the PLA ordered onlookers to strike her. When none did, local “activists” were recruited and paid to attack her on the spot, after which, according to witnesses, she died ten days later from the injuries sustained. Tantric monks from the Ramoché were forced at
gunpoint to break lifelong vows of celibacy by publicly having intercourse with nuns before the entrance to the Central Cathedral.

By October 1959, the population was cowed. Not only had “struggle session” produced a profound fear of the Chinese; it had also, as intended, created an atmosphere of mutual distrust among Tibetans. Old friends could no longer confide in one another; parents ceased speaking frankly before their own children. In the monasteries, an even more difficult atmosphere prevailed.

It was on the clergy, the most cohesive and hence threatening group in Tibetan society, that the Chinese vented their full wrath. Monasteries were ransacked, cartoons scrawled on their walls by the PLA. One of the most popular, called “the two-faced lama,” parodied the multi-limbed style of Buddhist deities by rendering a monk with two faces and six arms; one face and three arms were gentle, the hands in prayer and giving blessings, the other—meant to be the real one—lurid, its hands abusing and molesting helpless supplicants. In Drepung, where about 2,800 of the almost 10,000 monks remained, a museum of past horrors was hastily created, with four rooms set aside for the exhibit. The first displayed captured weapons, surrounding an effigy of the Nechung
kuden
in trance, who, as a nearby inscription related, was telling the people to revolt, thereby leading them to defeat. Next, an “economic exploitation” room represented Drepung as a great machine for systematically robbing the common man. The presentation recounted how, over its numerous estates, Drepung extracted a series of outlandish taxes—on dogs, cats, chickens, donkeys, flowerpots, cigarettes and snuff. A quarter of Drepung’s income was purported to come from usury. On display was a warped board, allegedly used for measuring grain taxes, illustrating how the monks cheated the people. When debts could not be paid, it was claimed, the monastery had the right to “enslave” the creditor for twenty-five years. Drepung was also held to routinely deal in opium. Monks who toured the monastic properties to collect taxes were accused of raping indiscriminately wherever they went; those who would not submit to their voracious sexual appetites were said to be flogged, exiled or tortured to death. A brisk traffic in young boys was supposedly constant. Simply put, as one monk related to a Western author permitted to visit Lhasa soon after the revolt, “The monastery is a hell in the universe that you cannot escape from.”

The degree to which the Chinese believed their own propaganda was made evident in
thamzings
such as those at Sera. Ignorance of various aspects of religious practice yielded unlimited opportunities for punishment, as with the
lama gyudpas
or tantric monks most of whom, having
mastered esoteric chanting techniques, wherein three notes or a chord was intoned at once, were given
thamzing
on the ground that they possessed “bourgeois voices.” While lamas and scholars were singled out for struggle sessions, the Chinese succeeded, only after extreme intimidation, in assembling a small group of “activist” monks to enact
thamzing
. Their victims, rather than being “struggled” against one at a time over a long period, were brought forth at a rate of ten a day into the assembly hall—otherwise kept in total darkness—and then bound and taken from the monastery by the truckload. Concurrently, the thousands of remaining monks were compelled to sign statements attesting to atrocities committed against them by Sera’s administrators. By late autumn, seven months after the revolt’s suppression, the Chinese decided what to do with the majority. A group of 150 of the “most dangerous” were sent to Drapchi Barracks, now a prison. The rest, along with prisoners from the Norbulingka and other locations around the Lhasan Valley, were confined in the first slave-labor camp in Tibet proper—Nachen Thang, a few miles east of the city on the shores of the Kyichu River.

Nachen Thang was the site of a large hydroelectric plant. It had been under construction—with seven brigades of paid Tibetan male and female labor—for some time, and was said by the Chinese to be fondly referred to by Tibetans as “the Pearl of the Lhasa River.” After the revolt, there was no longer any need to pay workers. By the end of May 1959, less important prisoners started to arrive at Nachen Thang, bringing its work force up to 3,700, guarded by 500 troops. By the end of December, the number had grown to 8,000. The prisoners were kept in ten compounds ringed in by barbed wire on three sides, with the Kyichu at their rear. They lived in tents, divided into groups of a hundred, and hauled rocks and earth for the construction of dam sites, support ditches, tunnels and service buildings. In the evening, each group’s daily output would be announced and those who fell short of the quota subjected to
thamzing
and additional labor. The plant’s first generator was officially opened in April 1960, its second in October 1962. Refugees reported that hundreds died from starvation and exhaustion during their construction, famine being prevalent through all of China at this time. A monk from Drepung Monastery who managed to escape to India in 1961 maintained that in Drapchi, where manual labor was not a factor, 1,400 of the 1,700 prisoners perished from starvation between November 1960 and June 1961.

Three of the principal labor camps created after Nachen Thang were Golmo, far north in the Tsaidam Basin; Tsala Karpo, in the
changthang
or northern plains, where borax was mined; and Kongpo, in the forests of southeastern Tibet. Kongpo, primarily engaged in deforestation, was the
easiest camp—the climate mild, the work not excessive. Golmo and Tsala Karpo, however, were death camps from the start.