It offers glimpses of a campaign of hunger strikes, protests and official retaliation lasting several years. Buddhist nuns tell of failed attempts to make prisoners salute China's flag and sing of their love for Mao Tse-tung, and of the beatings provoked by their resistance. Chinese terror in Tibet reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution, when all religious institutions and artefacts were outlawed, clerics were murdered, temples demolished and countless treasures melted down or shipped to Chinese vaults. The new accounts present a rare glimpse of real life in Tibet, a story that is blighted by rewritten history and propaganda. Foreign journalists based in China are forbidden to set foot there, except for rare, heavily guarded delegations.
Foreign diplomats can see little more.
But for the country's two and a half million people Tibet is where China looks, and acts, like the dictatorship it still is. This site is maintained and updated by The Office of Tibet, the official agency of His Holiness His Holiness the Dalai Lama in London. This Web page may be linked to any other Web sites. Contents may not be altered.