by John Avedon
Following the reversal in 1957 of the liberal Hundred Flowers Movement—in which Mao had encouraged intellectuals to openly criticize the Party—the CCP itself destroyed its own best hope for a successful minorities policy. The “anti-rightist” campaign which ensued saw every vestige of liberality at the Peking Institute crushed. With the radical left line in ascendancy, the first wave of thamzing fell on the students. The principal of the Institute, Phi Shadong, was singled out as a “capitalist-roader”; posters were hung in the dining halls, classrooms and dormitories denouncing the liberal methods of his “petty-bourgeois administration” and accusing its adherents, in a new and frighteningly vehement tone, of being “pigs fed by the people,” having “human bodies but a snake’s head” and being “divorced from the masses.” Excursions, dancing and the practice of religion were forbidden. To create a proletarian lifestyle, monthly stipends were cut by three quarters, new clothes were no longer issued, food was strictly rationed and the students were forced by “activist” cadres of the Communist Youth League to criticize themselves for everything from wearing pointed shoes and pants that fit too tightly to having gone to movies or plays in the past. As the repression worsened, whatever sympathies young Tibetans had for Communism were destroyed, and replaced by their antithesis: underground organizations. Using sports teams and the bands as their cover, groups such as the “Ear” and “Nose” Society hung posters denouncing the administration with its own Marxist terminology. In other minority schools as well, similar groups took shape—sometimes not even in secret—as in the case of the Gansu Nationalities Institute, where fifty-two Chinese and eighteen Tibetans died in open clashes during the early sixties. In Peking, though, members of the underground were soon uncovered and subjected to a bloody round of thamzing held in the Institute’s dining hall. As the Great Leap Forward got underway in 1958, fleshed out by a campaign to oppose “local nationalism” among the minority students, an estimated 60 percent of the Tibetans at the Institute were given thamzing—a number of them dying at the hands of their friends in the process.
In the middle of the night of March 20, 1959, the 1,000 Tibetan students studying at the Peking Institute of National Minorities were awakened by Chinese instructors and made to assemble in their classrooms. There they heard for the first time of the revolt in Lhasa. Ordered to write letters home dissuading their families and friends from taking part in the rebellion, they were shortly divided into three groups according to readiness. By the middle of May the first two hundred were returned to Tibet as the vanguard of a hasty effort to create a new bureaucracy. During the summer of 1959 almost 3,500 Tibetans were transferred home from nationalities institutes in China. Before leaving they were issued new boiler suits, hats, canvas shoes and blankets—items of great value under prevailing conditions. They returned to their country, after many years’ absence, wearing the emblems of the ruling elite.
In reality, the majority of China’s new workers were virulently anti-Han. Thus, while required to rely on Tibetans to administer the country, China was in fact putting in place those who would soon lead Tibet’s burgeoning underground. Well versed in both Marxist ideology and Chinese administrative procedure, the cadres learned to carry out orders while seeking promotion to higher office from which they could more effectively undermine policy. Over the next twenty-five years, those trained in China joined two other cadre groups working in Tibet. The first was comprised entirely of wholehearted collaborators—local “activists” of poor background selected during the implementation of the Democratic Reforms and subsequent policies. By 1965 there were 20,000 of them. Due to their genuine allegiance, they received choice positions in factories, schools, the army and government offices. They were, however, despised by the Tibetan people, and derisively labeled “Lions with a Dog’s Bite.” The second type of home-grown cadre represented the opposite of the first. Loosely selected, they were trained in two- to six-month crash courses beginning in the early sixties. Their studies consisted almost exclusively of the revolutionary ideology they were to implement. Many had been forcefully taken from their villages, and their open hatred for the Chinese often landed them in prison. But it was the elite, China-trained group that continued to cause the greatest trouble. Employed as teachers, nurses, reporters for Radio Lhasa and the Tibet Daily, they remained a constant problem for the Chinese, who, in spite of their suspicions, remained dependent on them. By 1962, almost 3,000 of the new cadres had to be dismissed as unreliable. Nonetheless, by 1965 there were between 30,000 and 40,000 Tibetans employed by the Chinese in administration. But none of them, from the highest collaborators to the lowest activists, had a say in governing Tibet: each reported directly to a Chinese party member from whom he or she took orders. After six years in the making, as shaky as the system was, it did manage to function as a feasible bureaucracy. Based on it and on the so-called election process—whereby its members were automatically placed in “office” at various administrative levels—the Tibet Autonomous Region approached its long-awaited inauguration. Only one obstacle remained—“a big rock on the road to socialism,” as both Generals Dan Guansan and Zhang Jinwu described him—an impediment, ironically enough, at the very pinnacle of the dummy Tibetan infrastructure, the supreme collaborator himself: the Panchen Lama.
Despite the veneer of the Panchen Lama’s unquestioned complicity with China, signs of trouble had appeared as early as 1958. At that time, even though it was rumored that the Panchen Lama’s father had supplied arms and horses to Chushi Gangdruk, no reprisal was forthcoming. Two years later, however, at the end of December 1960, while the Panchen Lama was in Peking delivering a “Report on Work in Tibet in the Past Year,” the PLA surrounded his monastery—Tashilhunpo, in Shigatse, the only one to have escaped the Democratic Reforms—and seized all of its 4,000 monks. Accused of complicity in the revolt, some were among ten Tibetans publicly executed three months later, on March 21. From fear of a similar or worse fate, others—including a few of the monastery’s most respected scholars and incarnate lamas—committed suicide. The remaining monks were then deported to Golmo and Tsala Karpo for forced labor.
The destruction of Tashilhunpo had a profound effect on the Panchen Lama. His collaboration appeared to falter even further in the second week of July 1960, when the Panchen Kanpo Lija Committee in PCART was disbanded. The committee had controlled the civil administration of Shigatse, thereby securing some degree of self-rule for the city unavailable elsewhere. Though few facts emerged to explain why these moves were taken, it was known among Tibetan cadres that following 1959 the Panchen Lama became increasingly recalcitrant toward the Chinese generals who were running Tibet. Besides demanding the restoration of all religious monuments damaged during the fighting in Lhasa (he personally financed the refurbishing of frescoes in the Potala and the Norbulingka), he arranged for the removal of images in the Potala to the Tsuglakhang, where they stood a better chance of protection by Tibetans. Moreover, his support of religion was not limited to the preservation of sacred objects. From his new residence at Shuktri Lingka, the Panchen Lama continued to receive pilgrims and offer discourses. During his sermons—which were attended by thousands—he never failed to mention that the Dalai Lama was Tibet’s true leader. He repeatedly stated that the development of Tibet must be led by Tibetans, as the Chinese were only there to help—a comment which was particularly galling, as it was taken from Mao himself and thus unassailable.
At the close of 1961, the Panchen Lama openly defied China. Late in September he and his entourage were invited to Peking to attend the 12th National Day Celebration. In Tibet, thousands were dying from starvation. Lhasa and Shigatse were dead cities, without stores, goods or commerce. Monasteries were gutted. Work gangs covered the countryside, prisoners and free alike toiling over dirt roads lined by dull green PLA convoys carting the harvest and religious wealth of Tibet to the People’s Republic. With nothing left to lose, Lhasans abandoned their labor and converged on the Panchen Lama as he made his way out of Lhasa
, petitioning him to plead with China for food and medical care. Their appeals galvanized him to act. Once in Peking he delivered a 70,000-character memorandum to Mao Zedong describing conditions in Tibet, included in which were demands for more grain for farmers, care for the aged and infirm, a genuine acceptance of religious freedom and a cessation of mass arrests. Mao assured the Panchen Lama that the proposals would be heeded. To demonstrate good intent, pamphlets were printed and distributed throughout Tibet announcing that Mao had personally acceded to the Panchen Lama’s requests and that improvements were forthcoming.
When the Panchen Lama returned to Tibet early in 1962, he found the situation unchanged. General Zhang Jinwu informed him that what had been said in Peking and what was done in Tibet were entirely different matters. Not only were the demands not to be carried out, said General Zhang; as the ranking party member in Tibet, he had a request of his own to make of the Panchen Lama. It had been decided, he related, that, in light of the Dalai Lama’s appeals to the United Nations and re-forming of the Tibetan government abroad, the assertion that he had been abducted by reactionaries was finally to be abandoned. The Panchen Lama himself was to publicly condemn Tibet’s exiled ruler, after which the word “Acting” would be dropped from his own title, he would become Chairman of PCART, and would move into the Potala as the head of the country. The Panchen Lama refused outright, stating that an attempt to take the Dalai Lama’s place would only infuriate Tibetans and thus undermine the very purpose of the act. Immediately thereafter, the Panchen Lama was denied permission to speak in public and was henceforth seen only among large groups at official events. To further signal the change in his status, the remaining crew of caretaker monks at Tashilhunpo was accused of five crimes—including keeping a portrait of the Dalai Lama—and subjected to thamzing before the people of Shigatse.
Two years later, in 1964, the Panchen Lama made a brief, but substantial reappearance. As a result of his acts he now enjoyed extensive support among the Tibetan people, and General Zhang Guohua was forced, before inaugurating the Tibet Autonomous Region, to clarify his position. Accordingly, the Panchen Lama was offered a final chance to rectify his obdurate stance. Once more he was to denounce the Dalai Lama, this time during a celebration of the Great Prayer Festival or Monlam Chenmo, traditionally lasting three weeks, permitted now for a single day for this express purpose.
The gathering occurred in March and was attended by more than 10,000 people. From a high throne overlooking Lhasa’s main square on the south side of the Central Cathedral, the Panchen Lama once more advocated, as he had in the past, freedom of religion and the need for Tibet to be developed by its own people. Then, at the moment he had been expected to denounce the Dalai Lama as a reactionary, he paused and looked for a long while over the crowd. After audibly sighing, he stated: “His Holiness the Dalai Lama was abducted from his country to a foreign land. During this period it is in every Tibetan’s interest that His Holiness should come to no harm. For if the Dalai Lama comes to no harm, then the Tibetan people’s stock of good fortune is not exhausted. Today, while we are gathered here, I must pronounce my firm belief that Tibet will soon regain her independence and that his Holiness the Dalai Lama will return to the Golden Throne. Long Live His Holiness the Dalai Lama!”
Stung by the magnitude of this display of defiance, almost five years to the day after the March revolt, the Chinese placed the Panchen Lama under house arrest. Generals Zhang Guohua and Zhang Jinwu flew to Peking to consult directly with Mao and Zhou Enlai. They returned in July to initiate a campaign called “Thoroughly Smash the Panchen Reactionary Clique.” In its first stages, the drive assembled evidence of the Panchen Lama’s “crimes against the people.” Bulky dossiers were compiled from witnesses who testified to a broad range of crimes. When the files were completed, three hundred Tibetan cadres—including the ranking members of the patriotic upper strata such as Ngabo Ngawang Jigme and Dorje Phagmo were assembled in Lhasa. Before reaching the capital, they were told that they had been brought together to denounce certain “leading reactionaries” who had recently been discovered plotting against the motherland. Their chief was the “big rock on the road to socialism,” the Panchen Lama, who, the collaborators were subsequently told by General Zhang Guohua, had organized a secret guerrilla army to fight China. The cadres were enjoined to remove the rock from the road.
The Panchen Lama’s trial, convened in August 1964 in the auditorium of a new PCART building (the old one having been burned to the ground by saboteurs), lasted seventeen days. Generals Zhang Guohua and Zhang Jinwu sat at the center of a table on the stage, with the Panchen Lama between them. Zhang Guohua opened the proceedings with a long speech in which he alluded to the Panchen Lama’s wrongdoing and listed the traitorous activities of the as yet unspecified “reactionary clique.” He concluded by saying, “If you squeeze a snake its insides will come out”—the signal for beginning a prearranged skit of thamzing. Phakpala Gelek Namgyal, a member of the patriotic upper strata from Chamdo, having long nursed a personal grudge against the Panchen Lama, was the first to openly denounce him. “Big mistakes have been made,” he said. “And the responsibility for this lies on the Panchen. Because of this, I therefore criticize the Panchen, Chairman of the PCART.” “These are serious charges against the Panchen,” said General Zhang Guohua, standing up on cue. “It is necessary to expose these faults at this meeting.” Thereupon the meeting broke into subcommittees, each headed by a prepared cadre who, during the group’s deliberations, “discovered” crimes committed by the “big rock.”
On the third day, the proceedings turned violent. Repeating his metaphor of the snake, General Zhang Guohua observed, “If you squeeze a snake its intestines come out. But to kill a snake it is necessary to crush its head. If we squeeze the Panchen by thamzing, many hidden reactionaries and enemies of the state will be forced into the open. If we kill the Panchen, the whole reactionary clique will collapse like a house whose foundations have been destroyed.” Cadres sprang from their seats and began to slap, punch and kick the Panchen Lama, who was pulled from his chair and brought to the center of the stage. The spectacle of seeing one of Tibet’s highest lamas beaten by his own people deeply disturbed the majority of delegates. No matter how often they were urged, they could not bring themselves to join in. Having anticipated this, a select group of sympathizers cited ten major crimes as evidence against the Panchen Lama and conducted more beatings to induce a confession to each crime. The list included murder, cohabitation with his brother’s wife, participation in orgies and stealing images from monasteries. The most serious charges, however, were those which claimed that the Panchen Lama had raised a guerrilla army trained in the use of machine guns and augmented by a force of twenty cavalrymen. The basis upon which the charge was made centered on a school in Shigatse, originally established by the Chinese themselves, to train cadres for the Panchen Kanpo Lija. In 1959 it had been converted to an industrial training school where carpentry, auto mechanics and blacksmithing were taught. Now it was described as an “underground factory” in which students manufactured arms and ammunition to be used in a future uprising. For evidence, two foreign cars, fitted with extra gas tanks (a not uncommon aid to driving in Tibet), were exhibited to the delegates as proof that, at the very least, the Panchen Lama was planning to escape (once more less than convincing, as there were large convoys and periodic checkpoints on all roads). As for the cavalry: years before, the Panchen Lama had received twenty Mongolian ponies as a gift. He was fond of the horses, and in his spare time often helped his grooms to exercise them. It was with this cavalry that he was to have attacked the motherland.
The Panchen Lama denied every charge brought against him. He repeatedly stated that though he might have erred in his work at PCART, he had received Zhang Guohua’s approval for every decision—an observation which further incensed the general. In the meantime, the Panchen Lama’s aged tutor, Ngulchu Tulku, attempted to take the blame for the “crimes” by stating that he had
personally taught his charge from an early age that “Communists were devils.” The Panchen Lama pointedly dismissed these remarks during the trial. Nevertheless, both his tutor and his steward were subsequently taken to Golmo, where they died.
With the conclusion of thamzing, General Zhang asked for suggestions regarding punishment. Execution, deportation and imprisonment were all proposed, but in reality the sentence had been determined long before. Eulogizing the magnanimity of the Communist Party in the face of the Panchen Lama’s dire provocations, the general informed the delegates that he would not be executed. After the trial, the Panchen Lama, his parents and the remaining members of his entourage were chained, thrown in closed trucks and driven out of Lhasa under heavy guard—their destination unknown. The next word came from Peking on December 17—four months later—during the 151st Plenary Session of the State Council. Here, for the first time, the Dalai Lama was publicly denounced as a traitor to the People’s Republic, stripped of his title as Chairman of PCART and accused of having “staged the traitorous armed counterrevolution of 1959, set up an unlawful government abroad, proclaimed an illegal constitution, supported the Indian reactionaries in their intrusion into our country, organized and trained the remnant bandits and alienated himself from the motherland.” Four days later, Zhou Enlai informed the First Session of the Third National People’s Congress that the Panchen Lama likewise had fallen from grace, having “led the reactionaries against the people, against our country and against socialism in a well-planned manner.” In retribution, he also was deprived of his title in PCART, but, as an indication that he might again be of use at some future date, his name was left on the roster as a common member. Following Zhou’s speech and a brief mention a few months later, nothing more was heard of the Panchen Lama, then twenty-seven years old. He simply disappeared.