Tibetans in Exile

Tibet has been an independent state since the 7th century. The 13th Dalai Lama declared the independence in 1913. The Chinese invasion of Tibet started soon after 1949 when the Chinese communist regime was established. The communist government sent its troops to Tibet under the name of “Liberation of Tibet”, in order to occupy Tibet. In 1951, 3,000 members of the “liberation forces” marched into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. By 1954, 22,200 members of the Chinese Army were stationed in Tibet. In 1956, revolt broke up in Eastern Tibet. The Chinese countered the revolt by bombing the monasteries, arresting senior monks and guerrilla leaders, and executing them in public. On March 10, 1959, Dalai Lama was invited to attend a meeting alone without his bodyguards in the Chinese Army Headquarters in Lhasa. The 300,000 Tibetans who feared that Dalai Lama could be kidnapped, surrounded the Norbulingka palace, where Dalai Lama lived, to protect him and not to hand him over to the Chinese Army. At night on March 17, 1959, Dalai Lama fled to India. At 2am on March 20, the Chinese started shelling Norbulingka. 200 members of Dalai Lama’s bodyguards were executed in public. Thousands of monks were killed on the spot or sent to labor camps. About 86,000 Tibetans were killed in this Tibetan uprising. During the Great Cultural Revolution, between the 60s and 70s, the Chinese destroyed more than 6,000 Tibetan monasteries, 95 % of the monasteries that existed. In the 80s, the situation of Tibet became better, and some monasteries were rebuilt. But in the late 90s, once the independent movement of Tibet resumed, the Chinese government cracked them down, arresting hundreds of monks and prohibiting the possession of photographs of Dalai Lama.　

About 134,000 Tibetans live in Exile, and most of them live in India. Many of them walk through the Himalaya mountains to reach Dharamshala, India, where the Tibetan Government in exile and the residence of the 14th Dalai Lama is located.