The religious-practice ban was lifted in 1976, but suppression in Tibet continued. With the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China, the Chinese suppression of Tibetan Buddhism escalated, and practice of the religion was banned and thousands of monasteries were destroyed. Back in Tibet, the Chinese adopted brutally repressive measures against the Tibetans, provoking charges from the Dalai Lama of genocide. He began an exile in India, settling at Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills, where he established a democratically based shadow Tibetan government. The highly religious people of Tibet suffered under Communist China’s anti-religious legislation.Īfter years of scattered protests in Tibet, a full-scale revolt broke out in March 1959, and the Dalai Lama fled with 100,000 other Tibetans as Chinese troops crushed the uprising. In 1951, a Tibetan-Chinese peace agreement was signed, in which the nation became a “national autonomous region” of China, supposedly under the rule of the Dalai Lama but actually under the control of a Chinese Communist commission. The young Dalai Lama appealed to the United Nations for support, but his entreaties were denied. In October 1950, Chinese Communist forces invaded Tibet and quickly overwhelmed the country’s poorly equipped army. Tibetans resisted efforts by China to gain greater control over the region in the early 20th century, and during the Chinese Revolution of 1911-12, the Tibetans expelled Chinese officials and civilians and formally declared their independence. Tibet, a large region situated in the plateaus and mountains of Central Asia, had been ruled by the Dalai Lamas since the 14th century. At age five, Tenzin Gyatso was taken to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and installed as the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. The monks were guided by omens, portents, and dreams that indicated where the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama could be found. He was of Tibetan parentage, and Tibetan monks visited him when he was three and announced him to be the reincarnation of the late 13th Dalai Lama. The 14th Dalai Lama was born as Tenzin Gyatso in a hamlet in northeastern Tibet in 1935. The Dalai Lama, the exiled religious and political leader of Tibet, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end the Chinese domination of Tibet.
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