The pro-Tibetan independence movement argument is that this is a misrepresentation of history created as a political tool in order to justify the Sinicization of Tibet.
[2][3] There was also a caste of untouchables known as ragyabpa, who performed work that was considered unclean, including fishing, metalworking, and prostitution,[4] much as with the Indian groups identified as dalit in the present day.
One of the central points of contention in the debate about labour and human rights in the historical region of Tibet before and after its incorporation into the modern state of the People's Republic of China is the very definition of Tibet and serfdom itself, with some scholars claiming that the debate is framed around Eurocentric, Sinocentric and anachronistic ideas about statehood and society which are projected onto the history of the area in a way that distorts understanding.
[citation needed] The various polities comprising Tibet have changed significantly over the past 2,000 years, and even during the modern period there have been dramatic changes in what Tibet is, as anthropologist Geoff Childs writes: "[Tibet] has undergone numerous political transformations from a unified empire (640–842) incorporating parts of what are now Nepal, India, Pakistan, and several provinces of China (Gansu, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan), to a collection of independent and sometimes antagonistic kingdoms and polities associated with various monasteries (842–1248), to protectorate under the power of an expanding Mongol empire (1248–1368), back to a collection of independent and sometimes antagonistic kingdoms and polities associated with various monasteries (1368–1642), to a centralized state under the clerical administration of the Dalai Lamas (1642–1720), to a protectorate of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1720–1911), and finally to a nation having de facto independence under the clerical administration of the Dalai Lamas (1911–1951)"[6]Although the central leadership in Lhasa had authority of these areas for various periods, some Western writers claim that this did not imply the kind of political control seen in modern Western states.
According to Luciano Petech, "K'ams [the Kham region, largely synonymous with the province of Xikang which was abolished in 1950] was practically independent of Lhasa under its great lamas" in the 18th century CE.
[18] Concentrating as it does on questions of national sovereignty, the official position of the Tibetan Government in Exile is more moderate in tone than that of some of its more extreme supporters who conflate the rule of the lamas with Tibetan Buddhist ideals, seeking to promote a Buddhist dogma that competes with the Marxist dogma of "feudal serfdom" by portraying Tibet under the lamas as, in Robert Thurman's words: "a mandala of the peaceful, perfected universe".
[19] Tibetologist Robert Barnett[20] writes: Chinese sources portray Tibet before 1950 as feudal serfdom in which serfs suffered terribly under the despotic rule of lamas and aristocrats.
[24] Another seminal promoter of the term is historian[25] A. Tom Grunfeld, who based his writings on the work of British explorers of the region, in particular Sir Charles Bell.
It has been argued that his book is not supported by traditional Tibetan, Chinese, or Indian histories, that it contains inaccuracies and distortions,[16][24] and that Grunfeld's extracts from Bell were taken out of context to mislead readers.
[32] In 1997 Goldstein used the term "serf" in the following, more cautious, way "...monastic and aristocratic elites ... held most of the land in Tibet in the form of feudal estates with hereditarily bound serflike peasants.
[45] The debate was initiated by Goldstein in the XI edition of the Tibet Journal, in which he defended his description of the features of Tibetan society as being very comparable to European serfdom.
[55] Coleman, integrating Goldstein's research with subsequent work done by other scholars including Rebecca French, Graham Clarke, and Franz Michael, argues that Goldstein overemphasized the de jure status of the mi ser at the expense of de facto characteristics – a high degree of social and economic mobility, and hence autonomy; frequently successful negotiations with lords to improve their status; and flight from untenable situations such as unpayable debts and exorbitant labor requirements.
[57] In the political debate regarding the nature of pre-1950 Tibet, Chinese sources assert human rights abuses as a justification for the Communist invasion.
[58] In this same reform, the Dalai Lama banned capital punishment, making Tibet one of the first regions to do so (preceding, for instance, Switzerland, Britain, and France).
Tibetan communist Phuntso Wangye recalled his anger at seeing freshly severed human ears hanging from the gate of the county headquarters in Damshung north of Lhasa in 1945.
I believe that the Chinese were perfectly well aware that they were conning the tourists with displays of desiccated human arms, flutes made from femurs, and silver-mounted skulls; these objects, they used to maintain, testified to torture, flogging and other atrocities.
Tsepon Lungshar, an official educated in England, introduced reform in the 1920s; after losing a political struggle the reformist was sentenced to be blinded by having his eyeballs pulled out.
"[64][65] This was sufficiently unusual that the untouchables (ragyapba) carrying it out had no previous experience of the correct technique and had to rely on instructions heard from their parents.
[68] The Tibetan tibetologist Tashi Tsering records being whipped as a 13-year-old for missing a performance as a dancer in the Dalai Lama's dance troop in 1942, until the skin split and the pain became excruciating.
[71] Because it was considered harsh by most Tibetans, they tended to seek alternative settlements and leniency from local courts instead of pursuing government action in disputes.
[72] Eric Teichman, a British diplomat, relayed a report from Eastern Tibet in 1916 during the Warlord Era by an American missionary in the following terms: There is no method of torture known that is not practiced in here on these Tibetans, slicing, boiling, tearing asunder and all …To sum up what China is doing here in eastern Tibet, the main things are collecting taxes, robbing, oppressing, confiscating, and allowing her representatives to burn and loot and steal.Believing that the American missionary's account might be a mistake, Teichman noted that whatever brutality existed, it was "in no way due to any action of the Chinese government in Peking or the provincial authorities in Szechuana.
"[73] Israel Epstein wrote that prior to the Communist takeover, poverty in Tibet was so severe that in some of the worst cases peasants had to hand over children to the manor as household slaves or nangzan, because they were too poor to raise them.
Sir Charles Bell was put in charge of the district from September 1904 to November 1905[77] and wrote that slavery was still practiced in Chumbi but had declined greatly over the previous thirty years.
As the only provincial level "poverty-stricken areas which lie in vast, contiguous stretches" in the People's Republic of China, the Tibet Autonomous Region developed a lot of anti-poverty programs, and the impoverished population has been shrinking substantially.
The Human Rights Watch World Report 2008: Events in China 2007 states: Widespread and numerous instances of repression target ordinary citizens, monks, nuns, and even children in an effort to quash alleged "separatism."
Seven Tibetan boys in Gansu province were detained for over a month in early September after they allegedly wrote slogans on the walls of a village police station and elsewhere calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and a free Tibet.
Ronggyal Adrak was detained and charged under state security offenses by police on August 1 after he called for the Dalai Lama's return at a horse race festival in Sichuan province.
The Chinese government has failed to bring to justice those responsible for the shooting death by People's Armed Police officers of a 17-year-old nun, Kelsang Namtso, while trying to cross the border into Nepal on September 30, 2006.
[citation needed] In 1958, neighbouring Bhutan abolished slavery and feudalism as part of modernization reforms at the behest of its Third King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, who ascended to the throne in 1952 at the age of 25.
[88][89] According to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, bonded labor and other forms of economic exploitation currently exist in nearby regions including India, Nepal,[90] and several Chinese provinces.