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Tibet is a beautiful country of mountains that stretch to the sky and valleys that are full of lush vegetation and people. It was, and still is to the degree possible, a Buddhist country that adheres to the ideals of peaceful life and non confrontation. Their culture is thousands of years old and their art forms are exquisite.

So why did China forcibly take possession of this neighboring country? China has a huge coastline and Tibet is landlocked, so access to the sea was not the reason. One must look deeper to find the reason. In the late 1940s the Chinese communist party had a huge standing army and nothing for them to do. So, they decided to implement a policy of retaking any territory that had ever been under Chinese rule. This included, among other countries, Tibet and Taiwan. Tibet was a soft target with a small army and a peaceful population. It was also a country whose government and religion were one and the same. Their religious leader was also their government leader and their laws were religious laws. This must have been like a poke in the eye to the godless communists of China and they vented their rage by slaughtering the monks and nuns, destroying the temples and shrines, and driving the leaders, including the Dalai Lama, into exile. The Tibetan people have been dealt with in a cruel manner by their occupiers and the slaughter continues. The actions of the Chinese against this peaceful people have been genocide in the purist form. It is no wonder that the Tibetan people cry for independence and constantly petition the world for aid in recovering their country.

Their population has been decimated, the Chinese government is pouring Chinese citizens into the country to the point that the Tibetans are now a minority in their own country. Interestingly, the Tibetans are not now and have never been considered Chinese, not even by the Chinese government. And their cry for the necessity to "liberate the Tibet people" begs the question "Liberate them from whom?".

The very fabric of Tibetan life has been rent from top to bottom and they are very close to vanishing as a people. And, yet no one has found a way to come to their aid. Their best hope is for world opinion to force the Chinese to relent and pull out of Tibet, but that would take a great deal of pressure from all the world governments and, as of yet, this seems highly unlikely to occur. Also, their location is so remote that it is nearly impossible to get an army in to defeat the Chinese. Even if this were possible, no country is willing to take on the massive Chinese army to liberate this small country. And their neighbors of Pakistan and India are in so much turmoil that they can be no help, leaving the Tibetan people at the mercy of the invaders.

Unfortunately, the Tibetan people must rely on world opinion and hope that China will grow weary or distracted and pull out of Tibet. If this does not occur, the Tibetan people and their culture and lifestyle may disappear from the earth forever. And, once again the world community will have closed it's eyes to a holocaust.

Learn more about this author, Melba Dagan.
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