-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.29/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.29/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 29 </A> ----- Laissez Faire City Times July 19, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 29 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tibet Castle, Chinese Propaganda by Richard S. Ehrlich GYANTSE, China -- To checkmate Russia's influence in Tibet, British troops invaded, bombed and killed 1,000 or more Tibetans here, an event China likes to emphasize as proof of foreign interference and treachery. The Chinese are now also using Gyantse Castle to showcase their claim that China later rescued Tibet from vicious local Tibetan leaders who were torturing and enslaving the masses. Up here on the castle's whitewashed ramparts, no mention is made of the past 40 years when Chinese allegedly killed more than one million Tibetans while clamping them under communism. This prized castle, in central Tibet's tiny Gyantse ("ghee-YAHN-tsee") town, crowns a giant horizontal-flipped-vertical stack of rock strata. High-walled towers jut from the top of the twisted peak, which is surrounded by Gyantse flat on the ground far below. The castle is a series of thick-walled, stone rectangles, spiraling up to a tapering, square tower, and dates back to the mid-1400s. Its overwhelming height atop this lone, skyscraping rock formation was supposed to ensure it could never be conquered. The British Invasion But in July, 95 years ago, champagne-drinking British military officers turned Gyantse's billiard-green plain into a horrific battlefield. "So began the last forward move in the Great Game," between London and its rival Moscow, wrote British historian Peter Hopkirk in his book titled, The Great Game, On Secret Service in High Asia. In 1904, the British invaded from their colonial territory on the Indian subcontinent, marched north past Bhutan into Tibet at Yatung, and then to Gyantse, which rests at an oxygen-thin altitude of 3,950 meters (13,035 feet)�about 2.5 miles high. The British stayed two months in Gyantse, negotiating for a while, and then attacked the Tibetans with vastly superior weapons. One of the explosions caused by an incoming British cannonball during that assault apparently remains unrepaired, displaying a big half-circle gap punched through the castle's southern wall. Next to the blast site is a new, Chinese-installed, polished tombstone, which laments that after British cannons breached the walls, Tibetan defenders fled to this dizzyingly high corner and threw themselves off in panicky, never-surrender suicides. Hopkirk makes no mention of such suicides and instead stressed, "The (Tibetan) defenders, who had fought with great courage, now fled, slipping away through secret underground tunnels known only to themselves, or over the walls using ropes. "They left behind more than 300 (Tibetans) dead and wounded, while the British casualties totaled just four killed and 30 wounded." An additional 700 Tibetans also perished, cut down by machine guns, 50 miles from Gyantse, according to Hopkirk. About 400 more Tibetan corpses lay in nearby Karo Pass. And 200 other Tibetans were killed at Red Idol Gorge, all on the British invasion route leading to Gyantse. Tibetan troops were armed with old "matchlock" rifles, rocks, and Buddhist religious charms said to make bullets miss the body. The British were led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, a fabled Central Asia expert. Describing his invasion of Tibet, Younghusband wrote, "It was a terrible and ghastly business." Eventually British troops captured Gyantse, which was a key town on the wool trade route to and from Tibet's capital, Lhasa, 265 kilometers (160 miles) further northeast. Mass Suicide? The British invasion's toll of 1,000 to 1,600 dead Tibetans appears to be accurate. But there is continuing controversy over China's claim that other "heroic" Tibetans committed suicide by jumping off the castle's tower, rather than surrender. Patrick French, author of a biography titled, Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer, told The City Times, "I consulted Tibetan as well as British source material when I was writing the book, and found no evidence to suggest that there was any mass suicide when Gyantse Dzong (castle) was stormed. "I do know that some Tibetans who cooperated with the British at Gyantse were murdered and their bodies mutilated, as traitors, while the seige was still in place. "But I think the story of the suicides is certainly wrong, although it's perfectly possible that individual Tibetans jumped off the walls of the dzong rather than risk capture or death at the hands of the British Indian forces -- Gurkhas, Sikhs and Pathan who were known for their ferocity in battle," French added. The Dalai Lama's self-declared, "Tibetan Government-in-Exile," meanwhile, condemned China's current use of the castle as yet another xenophobic attempt to blast the West. Tseten Samdup of the Dalai Lama's London-based Office of Tibet told The City Times, "The fact is, the British invasion of 1904 resulted in the death of hundreds of Tibetans, almost a thousand. "There wasn't any mass suicide such as jumping from the cliff. Unfortunately, the Chinese are always drumming up anti-Western feeling amongst the Tibetans and their own Chinese people," Samdup said. Today, inside Gyantse Castle, a small Chinese-built museum displays rusty weapons, ammunition and dramatic paintings and photographs of Britain's "army of about 10,000 invaders." Hopkirk, however, said a "straggling column of 10,000 coolies" actually comprised the bulk of that force, supporting about 2,200 British and colonial troops. All sides agree that the British Empire's attack traumatized Tibet. The castle's museum laments, "After the 13th Dalai Lama issued a conscription order, the monks and laymen from every part of Tibet enthusiastically responded to the call, and recruited more than 3,000 (Tibetan) armymen and militia who rushed to the frontlines, along with the local people, to resist the British aggressors. "Tibetan soldiers and militias fought heroically, but they were not able to check the enemy that were equipped with modern weapons." "Looting, I mean to say Foraging" C. G. Rawlings, in his cavalier 1904 report to London describing, "The March to Lhasa," boasted of "the finest sight I have ever seen, the storming of the breach" at Gyantse Castle. "Looting, I mean to say foraging, went on for several days. All around, it was back luck on the people, for there was not much left when we had finished. "It was nasty work at first, for our men are mostly criminals, the sweepings of the bazaars of India." Russia loudly protested the invasion from the very beginning. Nevertheless, after his victory at Gyantse Castle, Younghusband became the first Englishman ever to enter Lhasa. The Younghusband Expedition forced the reclusive Tibetans to sign � in the 13th Dalai Lama's abandoned throne room inside the Potala Palace � a convention which read: Without the consent of Great Britain, no foreign power shall be permitted to send either official or non-official persons to Tibet, no matter in what pursuit they may be engaged...or to construct roads or railways or erect telegraphs or open mines... Believing they had outfoxed Russia's business and military capability in Tibet, the British departed. The Miracle of Chinese Liberation Today, in a bid to squeeze Gyantse Castle for as much propaganda as possible, China also has turned one rooftop into a gruesome stage to show how all of "old Tibet" was a miserable place, before Chinese communists "liberated" it in the 1950s. On the castle's tan roof, three sneering, bug-eyed, Tibetan-faced mannequins whiplash a face-down Tibetan dummy prisoner, in an outdoor, faux jail cell. Two other black-haired, gaunt, Tibetan mannequins languish in a deep pit, signposted: "Dungeon." The life-size display blames Tibet's former political system of dalai lamas and regents. "Corporal punishment was an important means by the ruling class to safeguard their political power," a Chinese-installed sign explains. "Under the feudal serf system, which combined religion and politics in old Tibet, torture of prisoners had a great variety (sic), illustrated with examples here. "Heavy penalty: They put a stone hat on the prisoner's head and scooped out his eyeballs. Or scooped prisoners' intestines, and asked the prisoners to eat it, by force. Tied a cord through the prisoner's clavicle (collarbone) and paraded him through the street. Bamboo strips pricked the prisoner's fingers, and scraps of paper were stuck on, to sway in the wind. "Prisoner's clothes were taken off, and a hot, iron screen dripped gum juice, which scalded the prisoners. Cowhide was used to bind the prisoners who were then thrown into the river. They threw prisoners from a steep cliff. Scooped prisoner's shank muscle, cut nose, cut kneecap and so on. "Light penalty: Put on fetters, flogged, lashed on the face, locked up in the dark prison, banished and so on. Here emerges one kind of the most common punishment, flogging, in old Tibet." China's two museum displays in the castle -- one of British slaughtering Tibetans, and the other of Tibetans torturing each other throughout old Tibet -- may appear unrelated. Like British, Like Chinese But both events echo each other, in a chilling way. For example, dalai lamas fled both the British and Chinese invasions. The 13th Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia to avoid the British attack. His "reincarnation," the current 14th Dalai Lama, fled to India to escape Chinese communism. But the castle's museums strangely avoid mentioning the 13th Dalai Lama's escape from the invading British. Perhaps Chinese officials worry that visitors might be reminded of the 14th Dalai Lama's escape and current self-exile, and his continuing non-violent demands for Tibet's autonomy. Britain's use of superior weapons, meanwhile, should have been a warning to both dalai lamas and other Tibetans. By failing to develop Tibet's infrastructure, education system, international relations and military, the powerful theocratic dalai lamas, and their wealthy feuding regents, left Tibet pathetically vulnerable in 1904 against the British, and again in the 1950s against the Chinese. The Chinese, however, learned the lesson taught by the British at Gyantse. In 1959, ironically mimicking the British, the Chinese victoriously bombed a strategic Tibetan fortress set atop a jutting strata of rock�but this time the Chinese chose the 14th Dalai Lama's Potala Palace in Lhasa. China's propaganda war and use of Gyantse Castle, meanwhile, is now being fought in the hearts and minds of Tibet's children. Communist-approved, Tibetan-language comic books available in Lhasa, depict greedy, long-nosed Englishmen killing Tibetans and looting Gyantse Castle. The little black-and-white illustrated books are sold alongside other inexpensive reads, including a Tibetan-language comic book of Alice in Wonderland. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On his third visit during the past 15 years, Richard S. Ehrlich recently spent one month in Tibet, including three weeks in Lhasa and a week in Gyantse and Xigatse. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!"-- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. His web page is located at http://members.tripod.com/ehrlich , and he may be reached by email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 29, July 19, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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