Scholar: Serfs´ emancipation topples dark rule in Tibet

Source: Xinhua | 01-22-2009 08:15

BEIJING, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- March 28 is a festival for millions of former Tibetan serfs and their offspring to celebrate their emancipation from the hell of cruel oppression, but for the former oppressors who are still dreaming of returning to the past, the day is marked for their paradise lost, said a Tibetan scholar.

NPC delaget Gesang Zhuoga, offspring of a former serf,  attends the meeting to vote for a bill Monday to designate  Mar. 28 as an annual Serfs Emancipation Day, to mark the  date on which about 1 million serfs in the region were  freed 50 years ago. (Xinhua Photo)

Lhagpa Phuntshogs, director-general of the China Tibetology Research Center, made the remarks after the regional legislature of Tibet endorsed a bill Monday to mark March 28 as "Serfs Emancipation Day", the date when about one million serfs and slaves in the region were freed in 1959 following an order of the State Council, or Cabinet, to dismiss the local government of Tibet and replace it with a preparatory committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

In old Tibet, the serf-owner class, who made up merely five percent of the Tibetan population, owned the entire cultivated land and grassland and the majority of the livestock, and they also controlled the freedom of serfs and slaves, who accounted for95 percent of the total population, the Tibetan scholar said in an article published by the Guangming Daily.