The story of Tibet unfortunately has been grossly ignored as communist China invaded a peaceful region, forcefully made its own province and for decades has been carrying out unspeakable human rights violations. While Hong Kong at least gets international media coverage and Macau economic prosperity, Tibet unfortunately gets none of this and remains to be ignored. 70 years after China invaded Tibet, at a time when the US-China relations are rapidly deteriorating, a glimmer of hope has risen for Tibet as American lawmakers Scott Perry has introduced a bill which seeks to recognize Tibet as an independent country. The bill is a glimpse of the West trying to correct a historic blunder. US representatives Scott Perry has tabled a bill in the US Congress which seeks to authorize the president to recognize Tibet, the autonomous region of the Republic of China, as a separate independent country. There is no doubt that this move will arc China, however it will also end up correcting one of the West's major follies. While the world was pushing to integrate China and help the nation diplomatically, China was invading Tibet in 1949 and was successful in completing the occupation 10 years later in 1959 under the rule of Mao Zedong. In March 1959, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political head of the Tibetan people, sought sanctuary in Tharamshala in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and established the Tibetan government in exile, a move that deeply infuriated China. Since the occupation, Tibet has suffered unspeakable atrocities as from 1958 to 1962, Mao and his government in their quest for cultural revolution killed more than 10,000 or 1 million Tibetans and destroyed 6,000 Buddhist monasteries. Since the 1960s, the Chinese government has made great efforts to change the ethnic composition of the region inhabited by the Tibetan people. Millions of Han Chinese were sent to live, marry and establish a family with ethnic Tibetans. This demographic takeover continues to be done in the name of the integration of Tibet into mainland China. The same model is now followed by the CCP to deal with Weighur Muslims. Such is the Chinese control over the Tibetan monks that they aren't allowed to travel anywhere without permission from the government and can be arrested for as little as reactionary ringtones. The Tibetan monks have tried to protest the atrocities in heart-wrenching protests involving even self-immolation. In what is now a regular occurrence, hundreds of the Tibetan monks are picked up by the Chinese authorities never to return. First abortions, sterilization and infanticide were carried out in the area on an everyday basis. The Chinese government has been accused of carrying out the physical, cultural, natural and economic genocide of the region. The Chinese government is also trying to reshape the Tibetan Buddhism and homogenize it with Buddhism practices in mainland China. For the last three years in a row, US think tank freedom house ranked Tibet among the worst places in the world because of the denial of freedom. In fact, the Communist Party of China has tampered with the six centuries-old tradition of reincarnation of the Tibetan people's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. This was when Chinese authorities abducted a young boy chosen to be the Punchin Lama. The Punchin Lama is one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, a second only to the Dalai Lama. With a series of complicated procedures and searches, the Punchin Lama identifies the reincarnated form of the Dalai Lama. The previous Punchin Lama, who identified the 14th Dalai Lama, spoke out against Chinese rule many times and wrote a report chronicling Tibet's famines in the 1960s. As a result, he spent more than eight years in jail and died in suspicious circumstances in 1989. In 1995, as a list of probable candidates for the next Punchin Lama was sent to the Dalai Lama, who continues to live in exile in India, that the Dalai Lama announced that a child named Gadal had been recognized as the 11th Punchin Lama. Unsurprisingly, exactly two days later, the Chinese government abducted the child and his family. None of them has ever been seen or heard from again. Fast forward by six months and the Chinese government announced Gadson Norbu as the next Punchin Lama, who incidentally also happened to be the son of two Communist Party members. Gadson continues to stay in Beijing and has rarely visited a Tibet. 25 years on, China also claims that the boy destined to be the Punchin Lama is a graduate and has a stable job. The 14th Dalai Lama is aware that China is going to use a communist version of the spiritual leader to control the Tibetan masses, and he has contemplated ending the whole tradition altogether. Because of this, we may never have a 15th Dalai Lama. China has registered its protests whenever the Dalai Lama is hosted by any country, be it in India or anywhere else in the West like the UK. Countries have even cancelled meetings with him so as to not sour relations with China. The West has always been in a position of power to take China to task over this blatant human rights violation in Tibet. But the West was complicit in China's invasion and had remained complicit if not for a China-made pandemic and Trump's entry into the American political scene. The West's ignorance and the Chinese Communist Party's core beliefs have led to the destruction of a great religion and community. The story of Tibet needs to be told.