Tibetan film ‘Four Rivers, Six Ranges’ premieres at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam

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1. The Tibetan resistant force known as the Tensung Dhanglang Makmi བསྟན་སྲུང་དྭངས་བླངས་དམག་མི་ led by Adruk Gonpo Tashi made themselves proud as the force that challenged the Chinese invasion of Tibet. The Chinese communists went on a rampage to destroy monasteries and imprison and kill monks and nuns in a frenzy of anti-religious bigotry. During this campaign named by the Chinese enemy as “Democratic reform”, the Chinese communists confiscated every belonging of every Tibetan family, every monastery, every individual!!! The rich ones were kicked out of their homes and made homeless! The Khampas are a martial race who are courageous fighters. The Chinese used tricks such as calling their leaders for a meeting and then surround the place with their PLA soldiers and take all the Khampa leaders into custody as hostages and murder them or just disappear for good. This perfidy of the Chinese communists alerted the Tibetans when the Dalai Lama was invited for a supposed theatrical show and asked to come without his body guards! This is how they decapitated the leaders of many Khampa tribes. As the Chinese so called democratic reform of pillaging and plundering the monasteries intensified, many Khampas took to the mountains to avoid humiliation, confiscation of their belonging and to avoid arrest and custodial deaths. The Chinese continued their savage suppression of the people in Kham and Amdo region to subdue them. They used Khampa communists to win over the Khampas to the Chinese side and Bawa Phuntsok was instrumental in hoodwinking many Khampas to the Chinese side. He told them to embrace the Chinese communists saying, “the communists are different from the Kuomintang and that the Chinese communists will liberate them”! Being imperialists, the Kuomintang had encroached into Kham areas and attempted to impose their rule but the Khampas only respected their own chieftains or Pon དཔོན་ and treated the presence of the Kuomintang with contempt and disdain. As the communists continued their onslaught on the Khampas, thousands fled to the hills and fought back against the enemy. They saw the Chinese communists as anti- Buddhists. So, their fight was for the protection of the holy Dharma which is the life blood of the Tibetan people. The Chinese had the upper hand in this unmatched fight between a ruthless killer and a peaceful people protecting their land and their faith. The communists were awash with the latest Soviet made weaponry and thousands of PLA troops poured into Tibet by the infamous so called “17 Point Treaty” of 23rd May 1951. They freedom fighters retreated towards Lhasa as the communists practised scorched -earth tactics to wipe out entire villages who had rebelled against them. As a result, thousands of Khampas families fled their land and moved towards Lhasa. Here in the Tibetan capital, an uneasy peace seemed to prevail but the Chinese were only biding for time in order to dig the trenches for the final assault and procure more arms and ammunition to restock their deadly arsenal to be used against the hapless Tibetans. As the Khampa refugees grew in the capital, the Chinese asked the Tibetan Government to force the refugees to return to their homeland but the Tibetan Government could not forcibly remove them. The Chinese tried in vain and during this time, a Khampa businessman by the name of Andruk Gampo Tashi rose to the occasion to organise a resistance to the alien imposter who had invaded their land and the Tibetan nation. He used his savings to organise a band of freedom fighters and called themselves “Tensung Danglang Makmi” བསྟན་བསྲུང་དྭངས་བླངས་དམག་མི་ (In exile the group was called Chushi Gangdruk around 1975-6 and made it a Khampa Centric organisation). As the anti-Chinese sentiment grew in Lhasa owing to the atrocities the Chinese communists committed in Kham and Amdo, many Tibetans including, Tibetan army recruits joined the movement. Perhaps the biggest recruitment came from the three great monasteries in and around Lhasa notably, Sera, Drepung and Ganden. The overwhelming population of these great monasteries are from Kham with much less numbers from Amdo and U-Tsang region. It seems most of the students from the Tsang region joined Tashi Lhunpo monastery, the Great Centre known as the seat of the Panchen Lamas.
   As the news spread like wildfire about the unimaginable terror the communists were inflicting in Kham, many monks threw their robes and joined the resistance. They had no qualms in throwing away their robes because the fight against the heathen Chinese རྒྱ་དམར་ཀླ་ཀློ་ was a virtuous act in itself. IT WAS TO PROTECT THE HOLY DHARMA AND THE COUNTRY IT THRIVES UPON! Besides, holy Lamas gave protection amulets, Buddha relics and medallions མཚོན་བསྲུང་ to protect them from Chinese bullets and told them that killing Chinese heathens was not a sin but a virtue! It was done to liquidate the enemy of the holy Dharma which is the very basis of happiness for all sentient beings. Obviously, the preservation of the holy Dharma for the sake all sentient beings is a moral duty of every Buddhist and in order to do that eliminating the enemy was vital. Even though, the freedom fighters had no heavy weapons, fighter jets and bombs like the Chinese enemy, they put up a gallant fight against the Chinese communist enemy and it is estimated that atleast 6,000 Chinese soldiers were killed by the Tibetan freedom fighters. They also had one Chinese colonel who defected to the Tibetan side and came into exile to India with Tibetans. It was his revenge against the communists who murdered his father! He lived in Bylakuppe with his Chinese wife and he was given the Tibetan name, Gya Lobsang Tashi རྒྱ་བློ་བཟང་བཀྲིས་་ He and his wife are buried together at Lugsung Samling ལུགས་བཟུང་བསམ་གླིང་ camp number one in Bylakuppe.
   The freedom fighters were gradually pushed towards the south towards the border with India in Lhoka. They guarded the Dalai Lama’s entourage from Lhasa until the Indian border town of Tezpur in Arunachal Pradesh where the Dalai Lama rejected the “17 Point Treaty” at a Press Conference for the International Media, by stating it was forced upon Tibet by threatening violent occupation of Tibet, if Tibet resisted Chinese communist demand! He said, that “nothing will satisfy him except the pre-1951 status of Tibet” which is complete independence. As the Chinese sent more reinforcements and bombed from air, many freedom fighters were killed. The sheer numbers of the PLA was no match for the ragtag guerrilla fighters. Central Tibet, being a barren land, the fighters had no where to hide! As a result by 1961-2, the freedom movement had fizzled out and most of them escaped to India, through Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. It must be remembered that the freedom fighters contained people from all three Cholkhas and even Ladakhis! Many young men who had escaped from Kham joined the resistance but more monks joined the resistance owing to the necessity to defend the Dharma and the country where it flourished. Every fighter was fully committed to die for the cause! Recent interviews of the last remaining fighters have all said that they were ready to die and never expected to survive. Even when the Chinese asked them to give up, they never did and some of them were imprisoned many years after they were surrounded and caught. One Ladhaki fighter who was a monk in one of the great monasteries says, “I am now old (he was on a wheel-chair) but if it can be helpful, I am still prepared to strap a bomb to my body to fight the Chinese”! Such was the dedication of the great freedom fighters of Tibet. Ratruk Ngawang, one of the most prominent freedom fighters both in Tibet and leader of the legendary SFF (Special Frontier Force) commander says,”when we kill an insect, we feel pity and say ཨོཾ་མ་ཎེ་པདྨེ་ཧུཾ་ but not when we kill Chinese! We just could not bring ourselves to pity the Chinese!!!
   TIBET BELONGS TO TIBETANS AND WILL ALWAYS BELONG TO TIBETANS!

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