Serfs Emancipation Day

50 years ago, on March 28, 1959, some 1 million serfs and slaves were emancipated in Tibet. The Dalai Lama, who himself owned more than 100 slaves, and thousands of serfs, left Lasha after a "rebellion" to postpone emancipation failed. The CIA paid the Dalai Lama $180,000, yearly, to leave Tibet voluntarily, and lie about China. The dalai Lama did not "flee," but was guided out of Tibet by radio. Both of the Dalai Lama's elder brothers were also paid CIA opperatives. The CIA worked with the dalai Lama to train his Tibetan followers at Camp Hale Colorado, and droped them back into China, to terrorise the country side. Later terror camps were set up across the border from China in Mustang. (Now northern Nepal.)

Legqog, director of the of the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People's Congress said that 382 legislators had voted unanimously to set March 28th as the annual Serfs Emancipation Day.
This was reported in Xinhuanet.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/19/content_10681877.htm

Many serfs cheered this commemoration, and said many children did not understand their own history. Several who had been serfs under the Dalai Lama described their ordeals, poverty, and humiliation at the hands of Lords, and high Lamas. Gaisang, 62, recalled that in 1954, due to flooding crops were spoiled, but "Thousands of kilograms of grain rotted in the warehouses of the aristocrats, while serfs died from starvation."

Professor Gaisang Yeshes compared the day to Sept. 22, 1862, when slaves were freed in the United States by the milestone "Emancipation Proclamation" signed by then U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

"But the difference is, Tibetan people soon gained the right to vote, while black people still struggled for voting rights 100 years later," he said.

Gaisang from Xigaze said he was proud to have become a lawmaker when he started life as the son of a serf. "Now I can vote, with a say in the decision-making of the government," he said. "This was unimaginable half a century ago. People were then praying all day not to be beaten."

"I didn't dare to dream about this when I was young, in patched clothes and shivering at the sight of the leather whip," he said. March 28, 1959 was "the day that changed my life."