TIBET: His Determined Holiness

For nearly three months since he first crossed over into India after his escape from the Chinese invaders, he had kept silent—but it was not for the want of anything to say. Last week, in the Himalayan foothills, Tibet’s fugitive young (24) Dalai Lama finally summoned his first press conference.

The eyes were serene, the lips often smiling, but the words were blunt. “The glorious achievements of Chinese rule in Tibet,” he said, were aimed at nothing less than “the extinction of the Tibetan race.” In 1951 he had signed an agreement with Peking, but only to save his own people and only “at the point of bayonet.” Even the official Tibetan seal affixed to the agreement was a forgery, and is still in Communist hands.

Since 1956, he said, more than 65,000 of his people had died fighting the Chinese. The Reds were not only trying to settle 5,000,000 Chinese in Tibet, nearly double the native population; they were even trying to declare “the Lord Buddha a reactionary element.” Today, said the Dalai Lama, there are only three classes of Tibetans: those deported, those in prison, and those doing forced labor.

The Dalai Lama had no intention of “leaving the nation’s valiant defenders unaided . . . Wherever I am with my ministers, the people of Tibet will recognize in us the government of Tibet.” He would carry his cause to all parts of the world, until Tibet gets back the freedom it enjoyed before the agreement of 1951. Though studiously polite about his host, the Dalai Lama gently hinted that he was getting a bit impatient with Prime Minister Nehru’s obsession with getting along with Peking no matter what. “I hope,” said he, “that the government of India will give our cause the same support, if not more, as it has given to small countries like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.” As for a meeting between Nehru and Red Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on Tibet, that might be useful—”provided the actual events in Tibet are considered in true perspective.”