Sixty Years: From Independence to Invasion
In two days, it will be 60 years to the date that Tibetans rose up en masse against the invasion and occupation of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The uprising was crushed, the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of Tibetans fled their homeland and thus began the decades-long repression of a people by an invading power. For sixty years, the Tibetan people in Tibet have endured being patronized and marginalized in their own country by an imperial – despite all the communist rhetoric of liberation and throwing off the chains of the oppression of exploitation – and illegitimate, force. The recurring from China is that Tibet has always been part of China and this is so easily refuted as to be laughable but for one thing: most people don’t know or simply accept that this is the case. To be sure, relations between the two countries has not always been exactly cozy; the Tibetan Empire expanded and invaded China during the Tang dynasty and captured the capital of Cha...