Communist Dictatorship in Tibet. The Chinese Occupation (1951 - present)

Tibet emerged in the first millennium as a Central Asian major power and centre of Buddhist culture. It was then subjected to control by the Mongols and China. During the 18th-19th centuries it existed in isolation and having restored de facto independence in 1913, has since 1949 been subject to the world's longest running ethno-territorial and cultural conflicts and communist experiments.

The invasion of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1950 and annexation of Tibet to China in 1951 ushered in mass repressions and cultural genocide that intensified in 1959 after forced collectivization and a crackdown of the Tibetan uprising, followed by new repressions.

Tens of thousands are believed to have been killed during the uprising. According to estimates, up to one-tenth of all Tibetans spent time in labour camps in the 1950s and 1960s and lost their lives or health to the inhumane conditions there - in some provinces, less than 10 per cent are said to have returned alive and well. The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader and head of government, fled to India with 100 000 other Tibetans, including much of the intellectual elite.

According to dissidents, some 70 000 Tibetans starved to death in 1959-1963 during and after the Great Chinese Famine. Before the Chinese Cultural Revolution started in 1965, the occupation had already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, the number of Tibetan genocide victims had possibly reached up to one million. Pressure on Tibetan culture and memory culminated with communists destroying Buddhist monasteries, scriptures and other heritage. The largest mass murders took place in 1968 when the Cultural Revolution was nearing its end.

A less obvious onslaught has taken the shape of deliberate Chinese colonization since the 1980s. After the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, Stalinist-style colonization has intensified in recent years and the percentage of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region has been steadily falling. According to some sources, Tibetans make up only 42% of the population in Tibet's capital Lhasa. In other regions, where Tibetans remain a majority, environmental woes have been caused by extensive mining.

Although torture and fast-track executions have never ceased, the repressions of the 1980s are minor compared to the destruction of the 1960s and early 1970s. Since the 1987 unrest, about 1000 deaths have been confirmed. A majority of those are victims of the 1987 and 2008 mass protests and refugees shot on the India-Nepal border. Estimates of the number of political prisoners and political detainees range from a few thousand to ten thousand. The unrest of March 2008, with over a hundred dead and a thousand arrested, will probably change the picture as conclusions are yet to be made.

Tibet's isolation and the lack of comprehensive statistics make it hard to compile data on victims. Official Chinese data is problematic and incomplete, as are the accounts by the Tibetan government in exile. The latter published an evaluation in 1984, according to which there were up to 1.2 million violent or unnatural deaths from 1945-1979 caused by the PRC's occupation.

According to this estimate, that was referenced in Western media without criticism, about 174 000 people died in prison and in the camps (other sources have stated that the number was closer to 75 000 - 100 000); 156 000 through executions; 432 000 in battles (according to other estimates up to 100 000); 200 000 - 413 000 on account of starvation; 93 000 through torture and about 9 000 committed suicide.

The abundance of speculations is resulting from the lack of reliable initial data - especially concerning the census, according to which there could have been 3-6 million people in Tibet before the invasion of the People's Republic of China. The U.S. Congress has estimated that from 1959-1979 nearly 1 million people died directly on account of political instability, executions, imprisonments and starvation, overall thus 1/7 – 1/5 of the population, disregarding demographic processes.