>Until 1959, when China cracked down on Tibetan rebels and the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, around 98% of the population was enslaved in serfdom. Drepung monastery, on the outskirts of Lhasa, was one of the world's largest landowners with 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. High-ranking lamas and secular landowners imposed crippling taxes, forced boys into monastic slavery and pilfered most of the country's wealth – torturing disobedient serfs by gouging out their eyes or severing their hamstrings.
This was just the first google result for 'dalai lama slaves' (no quotes). The West wants to think that Tibet is the the good guy, since China is _obviously_ the bad guy, but it turns out that history doesn't have good guys and bad guys; it has humans, and humans at the top of large-scale traditional hierarchies tend to be cruel to humans at the bottom of those hierarchies. So it goes.
Here's one of the comments from the guardian under that article:
buddhabuddha
12 Feb 2009 2:55
0
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As Cheese Commando pointed out in the very first comment in this string, Sorrel Neiss did indeed used to work for China Daily in Beijing -- China's English language Pravda.
Ho hum though -- plurality of opinion and all that: we wouldn't want to sink to Beijing's level and censor her, right? (We can correct her though on those waaaay wayward notions of China's hospitals in Tibet, etc.)
As the Dalai Lama himself concedes, Tibet was indeed quite a dark and savage place; many other places in Asia, Africa and Europe were also dark and savage at the same time -- including of course China.
Indeed, the Dalai Lama was on the point of instituting a series of social and governmental reforms in Tibet -- who knows if they would or wouldn't have worked -- when the Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded.
Pretty sure the Tibet was invaded before the Dalai Lama even had a chance to show what sort of ruler he would have been. The only people who speak negatively of him are Chinese.
