• toadjones79@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Fairly common knowledge. Even portrayed in movies like Kuru and Seven Years in Tibet. Unfortunately the whole thing has been wrapped up in lots of misinformation. The Tibetans have both accused China of atrocities and claimed that they didn’t happen. Outsiders looking in on this could argue that they were trying to appease the Chinese to maintain the paltry religious autonomy granted by the Seventeen Point Agreement. Here is a link to a PDF from the Tibetan Bureau in Geneva listing their atrocities. It is worth noting that even these claims are impossible to verify. The Chinese government has worked tirelessly to scrub the world knowledge base, and most search companies are more than willing to cooperate with such large governments with huge resources. Additionally, sensationalism is equally attractive, meaning it is easy and tempting to over report and exaggerate war crimes.

    But the simple fact remains that May Zedong openly opposed religion and claimed that his annexation of Tibet was a “liberation” from what he called “religious oppression.”

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      22 hours ago

      Fairly common knowledge. Even portrayed in movies like Kuru and Seven Years in Tibet.

      Oh, well if it’s portrayed in movies it must be true.

      Here is a link to a PDF

      That document lists 100 atrocities, which of them are you referencing with “forcing children to murder their parents?”

      It is worth noting that even these claims are impossible to verify.

      Mhm.

      But the simple fact remains that May Zedong openly opposed religion and claimed that his annexation of Tibet was a “liberation” from what he called “religious oppression.”

      Yes, because Tibet was subject to religious oppression. They had an aristocratic system of serfdom with extreme poverty (while the religious rulers lived in luxury), and an average life expectancy in the 30s. It was a cruel, oppressive theocracy, and used religion to justify a caste system similar to India’s history of discrimination towards “untouchables.” After the aristocrats and theocrats were thrown out, the Tibetan people experienced the same massive increases in life expectancy and improvements in material conditions that the rest of China experienced during this period, including doubling of life expectancy.

      Tibet emerged along with countless other warlord states following the collapse of the Qing, it was always considered part of China by the KMT and it was never recognized as an independent state by the international community (iirc, it was only ever recognized by like Mongolia). The communists and nationalists fought side-by-side against most of these warlord states with a common understanding that the nation needed to be unified, however, Tibet wasn’t a priority because of it’s remoteness. Had the KMT won they’d have brought it back into the fold eventually too, as evidenced by the fact that Taiwan still maintains a territorial claim over all of Tibet.