The Genocide of 1.2 million Tibetans Debunked, page 1

As most people on this forum will be well aware the mainstream media is largely controlled by multinational corporations. The result of that is that much of what you get from the media is propaganda that furthers the interests of these giant corporations.

China has been in the media a great deal recently because of the riots in Lhasa, Tibet and the Olympic torch protests. The media has portraye China as an evil country responsible for destroying Tibet's Temple's, the genocide of 1.2 million Tibetans and of destroying the Tibetan culture. Conversely the Dalai Lama has been portrayed as a Ghandi like figure whilst the Tibetan government in exile and Lamist monks are portrayed as peace loving Buddhists.

Academics and historians have a different point of view and its one that is rarely seen in the media.

Here is an extract from an article by tibetologist Barry Sautman showing his research on some of the above issues:

Colonialism, Genocide, and Tibet

"There is, however, no credible evidence of ongoing mass killing, physically enforced birth control, or forced intermarriage in Tibet. The claim of 1.2 million Tibetans dead, repeated by the TGIE and Tibet activists (Anon., 2001; Meek, 2002), Western politicians and media (CTA, 2004; Anon., 2004a), and thousands of websites is, moreover, inaccurate. Patrick French, ex-head of the UK Free Tibet Campaign, examined reports from which the 1.2 million dead claim is supposedly derived. He found them to be based on rumours and ‘constant, unchecked duplication’ of numbers. French determined that 1.07 million of the claimed deaths were male. There were only some 1.25 million Tibetan males at the time, yet with almost all males supposedly eliminated, Tibetans managed to double their numbers in the ensuing three decades (French, 2003, pp. 288 – 92). The Dalai Lama has also acknowledged that the 1.2 million figure is based on duplications and is in effect not reliable (Mei, 1998)". "More than a third of the 1.2 million deaths are said to be from famine. The figure is not based on eyewitness accounts or access to state statistics, and refugee reports have often been skewed to please exile authorities (Goldstein & Beall, 1991, p. 301). Thus, only indirect methods can roughly gauge the number of deaths. Australian-trained demographer Yan Hao examined the 1990 PRC census’s Tibetan age – sex cohorts and found a low male-to-female ratio among those 20 – 34 years old in 1960. That indicates a sharper decline during China’s famine years (1959 – 1962) among young males than other Tibetans, not compatible with famine, which tends to impact equally on men and women and disproportionately kill the very young or old. Yan shows that the famine period birth decline was 11.5 per cent among Tibetans, but 40 per cent among Han. The decline among Han was due only to famine, but the Tibetan decline had additional causes, including rebellion and emigration. He estimates famine period national excess deaths at 1.2 per cent of the population per year. Even assuming famine was as much a cause of decline in Tibetan births as Han births, the Tibetan excess death rate would have been 0.3 per cent per year, as the birth decline rate among Tibetans was only a quarter of the Han rate. If there were 2.5 million Tibetans at the start of the famine, fewer than 25,000 Tibetans would have died of famine in 1959 – 1962 (there are no reports of significant later famine deaths in Tibet), yet the e´migre´ claim is 413,000 (Yan, 2000)".

A link is provided below to the International Commission For Jurists Report on Tibet (1960) so often cited by free Tibet Campaigners as evidence of physical genocide in Tibet. As you will see it is cleverly worded using innuendo but only refers to cultural genocide. I wonder how many campaigners have actually bothered to read this.

www.tibet.com...

Part II of Sautman's article extract continued in the next post.