Indian newspaper applauds China´s democratic reform achievements in Tibet

Source: Xinhua | 03-29-2009 09:06

NEW DELHI, March 28 (Xinhua) -- The democratic reform in China's Tibet Autonomous Region abolished the theocratic system, did away with feudal serfdom and slavery, emancipated about a million serfs, and laid the basis for the modern development of the region as a part of the Chinese socialist system, an Indian newspaper said Saturday.

The reform in 1959 brought forward China's project of freeing a million serfs, said a leading editorial published by The Hindu, one of India's major English newspapers, which echoed the celebration of Tibet's first Serfs Emancipation Day, an official annual holiday, and denounced the Dalai Lama's past persecution of the Tibetan people.

"History shows that resistance to anti-feudal reform was deeply entrenched in his ancient regime -- fusing the causes of separatism and the preservation of feudal serfdom and theocracy," said the editorial written by the newspaper's chief editor Narasimhan Ram.

Massive historical documents and material, and the accounts of several western adventurers, scholars, and journalists who visited old Tibet, testify to the historicity of the existence, right up to 1959, of a system of medieval feudal serfdom that, in its rapacity, cruelty, theocratic absolutism, and long-lastingness, had no parallel in modern times, the editorial said.

The Tibetans are a wonderful people and old Tibet had great civilizational achievements to its credit, but even by the middle of the 20th century, the (poor) socio-economic condition of more than 90 percent of its population of just over a million beggared belief, it said.