White House documents on the Tibetan Revolt: March 1959
March 31, 201152 years ago today, after a landmark Tibetan uprising that ended with the final Chinese takeover of Tibet, the Dalai Lama arrived in India after a harrowing 14-day escape from Lhasa. For this anniversary, I've put together a few documents from the Eisenhower Presidential Library, including three memos from the Operations Coordinating Board. (The OCB, exclusive to the Eisenhower administration, was a committee responsible for coordinating national security policies among various government agencies, including the CIA.) Discussed are strategies for how the Tibetan revolt should best be exploited for the Cold War interests of the US at the time. The final memo refers to two State Department press statements which are included at the end. All combined, it's a taste of what was going on behind the scenes and what was being made public during a tragic time that critically changed the course of history for Tibetans.
CLICK HERE to download the PDF.
Keep in mind these were written before the US had knowledge of the Dalai Lama's arrival -- the CIA didn't receive Athar's radio message until April 2nd. Last year's blog post has more on that if you're interested. It's also good to know a couple of abbreviations commonly used by the US government to distinguish the two opposing Chinese governments: "Chicom" = Chinese Communists (PRC), and "Chinat" = Chinese Nationalists (ROC, AKA Taiwan). And of course, "Peking" or "Peiping" is how the Western world referred to Beijing back then.
And a final document HERE. This one, "Peking Publicity for Tibetan Rebellion and Unrest", is from the US National Archives though it's not clear which government department it's from. Not so much related to this post's title as much as I had promised earlier to post it this month, it's nonetheless an insightful US documentation of Chinese reaction to the building Tibetan resistance. From August 7, 1956 to January 1, 1959, it reveals a hard-core China the world didn't become aware of until March 1959.
US Presidential Briefings: March 1959
March 17, 2011For this 52nd anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight from Lhasa, here's a couple of interesting documents from 1959 found at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. CLICK HERE for the "Synopsis of Intelligence material reported to the President" dated March 17 and March 23, with bits on Tibet as part of other international matters of the time.
The sources for at least the second Tibetan report were Athar and Lhotse, two of the initial six-man team that was trained by the CIA and dropped back into Tibet in the fall of '57. Here's an excerpt from the translation (thanks to his daughter, Doma Norbu) of a 1999 video recording of Athar, a few years before his death:
I safely reached the military quarters in Dhapo Lhagyari. There I met my friend. We sent a wire to the US that we had arrived safely. We had a lot of work to be done and had started preparing. We requested the US for more weapons as we needed them. One plane with weapons were sent. It was just like the last drop.After collecting the weapons we reached Nyende Dzong. The March 10th trouble had occurred in Tibet and a messenger was sent to us. It had taken the messenger 7 days to reach us. It was a letter from the Lord Chamberlain, Phala, about His Holiness’ escape. We sent a wire to the US about the troublesome situation in Tibet. We were told to leave immediately and go near Lhasa to evaluate and report on the situation. My friend said that this was not good. If His Holiness was to escape, the weapons should not be sent to the Chushi Gangdruk headquarters. Around a 100 cavalry that did not have weapons needed to be armed. There were weapons for around 150 men.
I asked my friend to follow later with the cavalry that would be needed to escort His Holiness. I left ahead with six other horsemen. When I reached Chunjo Riwochen, His Holiness arrived there. From there on, I sent detailed reports of our journey.
Revolt & Propaganda in “Unconquerable Tibet”
February 25, 2011
As revolution fever whips through North Africa and the Middle East, I thought I’d post an archival film called "Unconquerable Tibet". It's also timely as we approach the 52nd anniversary of March 10th, a day the Tibetan exile community commemorates as Tibetan National Uprising Day. That landmark revolt against the People's Republic of China wasn't the first or the last display of Tibetan rebellion by far; protests continue today (albeit unarmed since the 70s) within Tibet and the worldwide diaspora.
Looking through some US government documents from the ‘50s, I came across an interesting memo titled, “Peking Publicity for Tibetan Rebellion and Unrest”. I’ll post it in full next month, but for now here’s the final passage, dated just a few months before the March 1959 revolt began: (Note: the opening paragraph is the US intro.)
January 1, 1959 – The Tibetans persisted in their opposition to Communist reforms and in their desire for independence; a New Year’s statement by a leading official of the Chinese Communist Party control committee for Tibet admitted continued Tibetan resistance which, as usual, he attributed to imperialist influence.
An energetic effort should be made to struggle against the enemy and to expose the schemes and subversive activities carried out by all the reactionaries and imperialists. This must be done for the defense of our country. Under the guidance of imperialism and some special service agents of the Chiang [then the leader of the Republic of China/Taiwan] clique, a small number of reactionaries are carrying out a series of subversive activities to deceive the Tibetan people under the flag of nationalism and emancipation. For this reason, we must heighten our vigilance against imperialism and all reactionaries and be prepared to deal a fatal blow to them.
While that has a familiar ring to it these days, the difference for Tibetans in 1959 is there was no world watching. There was no press allowed in Tibet then (and very little now, for that matter). Few Tibetans had cameras then to document what was happening. So no one was there, that I have record of, to film what sounds like a massacre from first-hand accounts. The men I interviewed who were there all tell the same story: the rebels were crushed with overwhelming force. By March 28, 1959, the PRC had claimed the Dalai Lama a fugitive and Tibet officially under China’s rule. The party line claimed they were liberating the Tibetans from imperialist influence. Their tune changed in 2009 when China began touting March 28 as “Serf’s Emancipation Day”.
Propaganda was also, of course, a significant part of the CIA’s Tibetan Task Force (as with all US operations). Today’s video is a good example of US anti-Communist propaganda, made in 1959 following the March revolt in Lhasa. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), here is “Unconquerable Tibet”.
Interview with the Dalai Lama: 1960
January 17, 2011On this day of honor for Martin Luther King Jr, an iconic figure in the African-American civil rights movement and staunch advocate of non-violence, I was inspired to find a video clip of the Dalai Lama, another iconic man of peace and leader of human rights for his people. Searching through my archive footage, I came across a film made in 1960 called "Fifteen Minutes in India" where the Dalai Lama is interviewed by a man referred to by the (unknown) narrator as Prince Panu of Thailand. Unfortunately I have no information other than the title, the date, and that it was filmed in New Delhi, India. That said, the ten minute interview excerpted here is the essential part and is probably the first time it's ever been seen since then. In it, the Dalai Lama shares his feelings and wishes in the wake of his escape from Tibet and the atrocities done to his people under Chinese occupation.
Though he thanks the world for their attention to this tragedy, the oppression suffered by Tibetans — those under Chinese rule and the refugees who have lost their homeland — still exists today. While the CIA secretly funded the Dalai Lama's government in exile and continued to support the Tibetan resistance until the Nixon administration, no substantial political aid was given to Tibet by the US. In 1959, former CIA Officer Ken Knaus and the Dalai Lama's brother, Gyalo Thondup, helped get a resolution passed in the United Nations that called for the respect of fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people. They got two more resolutions passed in 1961 and 1965 that supported human freedoms in Tibet as well as their right to self-determination. But the US was never willing to openly support Tibetan independence; the one thing that would’ve made any real difference.
Leave it to say that the Tibetan issue has been off the table in US-China relations since the Nixon Administration, and the issue of basic human rights in China has essentially been sacrificed in favor of economic stability. In February 2009, when the question was raised whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would press the issue in her visit to China, she infamously replied, "We know what they are going to say because I've had those kinds of conversations for more than a decade with Chinese leaders. We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." In anticipating Chinese President Hu Jintao's first state visit to the US this week, it's been reported that President Obama will make room for discussing human rights in his public appearance with Hu, as well as during private meetings. We'll see if that happens and what, if anything, comes from it.
As for any hope of political support for Tibetan rights — whether it be independence or genuine autonomy within China, as the Dalai Lama currently calls for — as long as China's power continues to be influential, they're likely to be on their own. Fortunately for Tibetans, the Dalai Lama continues to be a spiritual beacon that attracts worldwide, if not political, attention to his people's cause. In their ongoing struggle with what is now the second largest power in the world, there is no doubt that Tibet faces overwhelming odds. But Tibetans can look to history and find countless struggles similar to their own, and remember that whenever the people have kept fighting for their rights, they have eventually won them. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." And in the words of the Dalai Lama in this interview, "In the present circumstances, I have only my hope. It is a small hope, but it is indestructible. I hope that we can persist against overpowering might until justice at last prevails".
Wei Jingsheng: Interview Excerpts
December 15, 2010With all the news recently about Liu Xiaobo, an advocate for freedom in China which just won him the Nobel Peace Prize, and also condemned him to an 11-year sentence in Chinese prison last December, I put together some excerpts from an interview with another famous Chinese dissident: Wei Jingsheng. Arguably the most well known activist for Chinese Democracy outside of China, Wei was arrested in 1979 on charges of counterrevolution and spent 18 years in jail. Since his release in 1997 through a US-China exchange, he's lived in Washington DC and has continued to fight in exile for democracy, freedom and human rights in China, as well as throughout Asia. The author of "Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings" and numerous articles, Wei has won many awards for his activism, including seven nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
On August 7, 2008, I interviewed Wei Jingsheng outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC where he was part of a protest against the Olympics being held in Beijing. Attended predominantly by Tibetans, they were accompanied by Chinese, Taiwanese, Uyghur, Inner Mongolian, North Korean, and Vietnamese groups who support human rights and freedom in China.
(Note that this is a loose translation taken from the interview's interpreter Huang Ciping, Director of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation.)
Interview Excerpts: Jamyang Norbu
October 13, 2010Jamyang Norbu is a noted author, blogger and activist in the forefront of the Tibetan struggle for independence from China. While he has many supporters, he is also controversial within the Tibetan community for criticizing the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration for eventually taking a "middle way" position of accepting Chinese rule, seeking only autonomy within it.
Norbu began working in the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in 1968, and was part of the Tibetan resistance in Mustang, Nepal from '71 to '72, just when the CIA was beginning to pull their aid. Mainly charged with getting intelligence on China, he also helped raise funds to keep the resistance alive until the Dalai Lama finally put an end to the Mustang base in 1974. Among other involvements in Tibetan activism, culture and academia, he was a president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, director of Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, and co-founder of the Amnye Machen Institute for advanced studies on Tibet.
He currently lives in the US, blogging on jamyangnorbu.com and rangzen.net (rangzen is Tibetan for independence), and writing his latest book, a literary history of Tibet's fight for freedom. Here are some excerpts from my interview with him on August 29.
CIA Impact on Tibet? Part 10: Roger McCarthy
August 24, 2010In the final video of this series, I'd like to introduce Roger McCarthy ("Mac" to the Tibetan trainees), considered by many in the CIA's operation, both Tibetan and American, to be the godfather of the Tibetan Task Force. He co-created the operation, code-named STCIRCUS, with Frank Holober early in 1957, and began training the first team in Saipan by March, later taking the reins as Project Manager in '58. McCarthy left the Tibetan operation in 1961, but his personal passion for the Tibetan fight for freedom kept him active in their cause until his death in October 2007. His book, "Tears of the Lotus", was published in 1997, after a trip to Tibet that year to see what had become of Lhasa. That was followed by a trip to India and Nepal in 1999 to finally meet the Dalai Lama, and reunite with the former Tibetan resistance fighters he counted as friends.
In the video, I'm taking excerpts from his 1998 presentation at Toronto University, and a panel discussion for Stanford University in 2006 called "CIA and the Secret War in Tibet", where he was among other panelists Bruce Walker, Ken Knaus, Mikel Dunham and Tenzin Tethong. Many thanks to his son Kevin McCarthy, and his friend Mikel Dunham, for sharing the photos used here.
4/4/11 I recently found out some background on the photo used in this video of Roger posing with Kalsang Gyatotsang. It was shot by photographer Pete Patterson, in conjunction with a Canadian documentary, "The Golden Throne" (not yet released). Many thanks to Diane Cartwright, the film's producer, for providing info as well as setting up the talk Roger gave at Toronto University, also used in this video. --LC
CIA Impact on Tibet? Part 9: Tsering Shakya
August 18, 2010Born in Lhasa, Tsering Shakya is a noted scholar and author of many articles and books on Tibet, including "The Dragon in the Land of Snows", and the recently published "The Struggle for Tibet", co-authored by Wang Lixiong. Currently a Professor of Tibetan history and literature at University of British Columbia, he organized the 2010 International Association for Tibetan Studies conference, underway this week at UBC's Institute for Asian Research, with 400 scholars from 21 countries attending.
From his interview last May, he talks about the CIA's impact on the Tibetan resistance to China.
CIA Impact on Tibet? Part 3: George Patterson
July 7, 2010Scottish author George Patterson has a long history with Tibet. After a year in China as a missionary, he arrived in Tibet in 1947 and lived there until the Chinese invasion in 1950. Following that, he briefly served as a translator for US State Dept and the CIA, and began reporting on the Tibetan resistance throughout the 50s. In 1964, he collaborated on the BBC documentary "Raid Into Tibet", a documentary that nearly ended the CIA's operation after filming a secret raid by Tibetan guerrillas --the only known film ever taken of them actually fighting. Mr. Patterson has written "Gods and Guerillas", his account of the making of that film, among other books on Tibet.
In part 3 of an ongoing summer series, he gives his opinion on the CIA's impact on Tibet's resistance to China.
