Tibetan Serfs Emancipation Day, 28th March, Part 2 - Tibet and the Qing Dynasty 清朝

This is Part 2 of a series of 8 Articles best read in conjunction.
Part 1 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8



A closer examination of the impact Tibetans experienced due to their encounter with the Han Chinese.


[2] Tibet and the Qing Dynasty

The Great Fifth with Emperor Shunzhi, with the Dalai Lama seated in the most revered position reserved only for foreign sovereigns!

In 1638 – 39 the Great Fifth Dalai Lama accepted the Manchu Emperor’s wish to patronise the Tibetan religion and thus the two Sovereigns entered into the Chö-Yön relationship.
It is noteworthy that this Agreement was entered into well before the Manchus had conquered the territories of the Han, which did not occur until 1644.
Therefore this Agreement was solely between Tibet and the Manchus and did not include the Han in any way.
This Agreement did, however, not preclude subsequent Manchu rulers and administrations from endeavouring to usurp the spirit of this Chö-Yön relationship, and seek to increase their power way beyond the agreed principles set out therein.

This, for one, led in 1728 to the establishment of the office of the Amban, the Emperor’s envoy in Lhasa. The Manchu Emperors though, without exception, appointed Manchus to the post of Amban, thus emphasizing the fact that this relationship was unequivocally between the Manchu Emperor and the Tibetan Dalai Lama, and that the Han, which under the Manchu Empire made up the majority population, were not part of this relationship.
With the issue of the “29 Point Ordinance for the Efficient Governance of Tibet“ in 1793 by the Qing Emperor Qianlong, who at the same time appointed Fu Kang’an as Amban, the Manchus sought to further increase their influence in Tibet.
Thus, they insisted, among other points on the adoption of parts of the Manchu judicial system and punishments.

Xiaoming Zhang, a CCP writer, confidently proclaims in his book ‘China’s Tibet’: “…….The basic principles formulated in the 29-Article Ordinance remained the standard for the administrative and Legal System in Tibet for more than the next hundred years.”

Death by a Thousand Cuts, a uniquely Han form of torture!

The Manchu presence in Tibet saw the introduction of such uniquely Han practises as “Ling Ch'ih”, known as ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’, Boiling to death, the Cutting off of Limbs, the penetration of the Ear with an arrow, ripping asunder by horses or other means, lighting fires beneath suspended victims, etc. These were all alien forms of punishments to the Tibetans and instilled a deep loathing and abhorrence of the Manchu and Han presence among the population.

Wherever the Qing forces managed exert any power over Tibetans, they meted out these peculiar forms of Chinese ‘justice and punishments’.
Dr. Albert Shelton explicitly describes the “cooking of forty to fifty Tibetans” by the Han invaders, who witnessed their skeletons after the bodies were fed to the dogs.

The Chinese Finger Presses now blamed on the Tibetans by the Han CCP in their exhibitions

The Manchu forces also introduced their instruments of torture, such as Pillories (chinese. Mu Chia 木枷) and Finger Presses etc. which, along with all the other forms of Han and Manchu judicial practices and punishments, are now attributed to the Tibetans by CCP propaganda and their compliant writers in a concerted drive to denigrate and demonise the Tibetans.

The Manchu and Han used these forms of torture, such as “ling ch’ih’ and forced the Tibetan populace to witness such acts of barbarism in an attempt to cower them into submission and as a powerful deterrent to resistance, wherever they managed to exert any influence.

A representative picture of Chinese execution of Tibetans by beheading

Luciano Petech relates events of such summary Manchu justice, which occurred around November 1728 as follows:
“Na-p’od-pas and Lum-pa-nas were done to death by the slicing process (ling-ch’ih), the two churchmen were slowly strangled, the remaining thirteen were decapitated by three cuts of the sword.”
He contends that this terrible scene, which the Tibetans were forced to witness, made a deep impression and traumatised the Tibetans for years thereafter.
Before being lynched in these uniquely Chinese ways, the condemned men were first paraded naked on their way to the execution ground, the ‘Tent of Death’ to further humiliate and dehumanise them.

Flora Shelton further relates accounts of such Han barbarities of “Ling ch’ih” by the notorious Zhao Erfeng, who managed to invade and occupy eastern Tibet between 1908 / 10, and used it with great indulgence, to terrorise the Tibetan population there in this, and other barbaric ways peculiar to the Han Chinese.

In his book Journey to Lhasa and central Tibet‎ by Sarat Chandra Das, writes:
“The Chinese punishment of the cangue is now adopted throughout Tibet, the criminals wearing it being also heavily chained.”

An American missionary wrote the following in a foreign press journal in Shanghai on his long time observation in Eastern Tibet:
“There is no method of torture known that is not practised in here on these Tibetans, slicing skinning, boiling, tearing asunder, and all… To sum up what China is doing here in Eastern Tibet, the main things are collecting taxes, robbing, oppressing, confiscating, and allowing her representatives to burn loot and steal.”

The Tibetans viewed these Han practises of judicial punishments as so barbaric, inhumane and completely alien to them, that once they had fully regained power over their own affairs they wasted no time, and under the guidance of the Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama decreed the Death Penalty as illegal, reformed the legal code and banned all forms of cruel corporal punishments such as mutilation.

In fact, Tibet maintained a code of conduct which dates as far back as Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century, based on Buddhist principles and forbade the mistreatment of peasants, or any member of Tibetan society, and the administering of any form of corporal punishment was the sole preserve of the central government.

Thus, Tibet was one of the very first countries in the world to outlaw Capital Punishment in 1898, a practise which is now extensively used in the CCP ruled Han nation, indiscriminately meted out to thugs, petty criminals, regime critics, Tibetans for ‘splittist activities’, and Falun Gong practitioners alike, so that some estimated Ten Thousand, (10,000) hapless people are exterminated in this way annually by the CCP.See Footnotes: i

Ling Ch'ih, a torture widely practiced by the Han Chinese in Tibet

Hence, what many early writers actually described, and today the Han CCP in their propaganda drive of demonisation depicts as Tibetan barbarism, were in fact Chinese forms of torture and cruelty, executed by, and imposed on the Tibetans, by the Chinese themselves.


Footnote: i

■ Today China runs, what they term Re-Education through Labour Camps, but in reality they are nothing more than slave labour camps, where the captives are imprisoned for mostly regime critical activities, such as exercising their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression or practising their religion, and there they are worked and mistreated to death in large numbers.
Today, the CCP also runs a very lucrative Organ harvesting programme where kidneys, corneas, hearts and other organs are removed from executed convicts, but mostly from live victims in this 'Laogai' system, Falun Gong members, regime critics and Tibetan disappeared, and sold to paying recipients.
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This is Part 2 of a series of 8 Articles best read in conjunction.
Part 1 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8



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