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In the onlooker who has never visited Tibet the self-exiled priests and lords may evoke sympathy as refugees from a happy country in which the people lived under their rule, inspired by a humane religious philosophy. The truth is that this society was a harsh and cruel tyranny in which, because they share the universal instinct for survival, the people made the best of their lot. Serfs of the European Middle Ages did no less. Jews in Hitler's concentration camps did no less. …But the indomitable fortitude and optimism of oppressed human beings in Tibet or anywhere else can only be confused with contentment by those not personally involved in their lives or who profit by such subjection and exploitation.
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Here, above the cloying stench of grease, butter and smoke, incense and old sweat, was a scene of natural beauty and unsurpassed human creation. It had been a world in which most human beings, enslaved by fear and ignorance, found life endurable only through the hope of a happier incarnation after death.
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the Chinese have confiscated the fabulous store of jewels, gold, silver and precious objects which the successive Dalai Lamas have collected through the centuries.
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Anna Louise Strong before them, were told about how villagers were forced to supply women for lamas and monks during their tax collection tours. They were told the same story of how one Drepung lama and his retinue had raped all the women of sixty families.
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"All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights."
Quoted in Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews, page 25.
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The first time [the landlord's men] caught me running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said: "This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring some blood from the brain." They beat then with heavier sticks and poured alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I passed out for two hours.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, page 31.
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In addition to being under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land -- or the monastery's land -- without pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. "It was an efficient system of economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market context."
Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), page 5.
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The common people labored under the twin burdens of the corvée (forced unpaid labor on behalf of the lord) and onerous tithes. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a new tree in their yard, for keeping domestic or barnyard animals, for owning a flower pot, or putting a bell on an animal. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Even beggars were taxed. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery for as long as the monastery demanded, sometimes for the rest of their lives.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
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Some monasteries had their own private prisons, reports Anna Louise Strong. In 1959, she visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and breaking off hands. For gouging out eyes, there was a special stone cap with two holes in it that was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the holes and could be more readily torn out. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113
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The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.
A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
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