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Exhibit shows Tibet's development

By Hu Yinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-09 07:39

(From right) Chairman of the Tibet autonomous region's government Qiangba Puncog, Chairman of the standing committee of the Tibet autonomous region's people's congress Legqog and Political Commissar of Tibet's armed police force Kang Jinzhong visit an exhibition on the autonomous region yesterday in Beijing. Xu Jingxing

National People's Congress (NPC) deputies from all five provinces and autonomous regions with many ethnically Tibetan inhabitants, who are in Beijing for the ongoing NPC session, attended an exhibition on the 50th anniversary of Tibet's Democratic Reform yesterday.

The free exhibition at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities opened on Feb 24 and runs until April 10. Most of the deputies are from the Tibet autonomous region, and Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

Foreign diplomats and journalists were invited to a grand evening performance by the Tibetan Song-and-Dance Troupe entitled Tibet in Heaven at the China Grand Theater.

Featuring many photographs, objects, documents, videos and sculptures, the ongoing exhibition showcases the last 50 years of development, during which time Tibet has moved from poverty to affluence, dictatorship to democracy, and isolation to opening-up, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Among items on display in the exhibition is a copy of a letter from the old Tibet government in the early 1950s. It read: "To celebrate the (14th) Dalai Lama's birthday, all the staff ... would chant the sutra. To successfully complete this ceremony, some special food would be thrown to the animals. Thus, a corpus of wet intestine, two skulls, many kinds of blood and a full human skin were urgently needed, all of which must be promptly delivered."

Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet autonomous region's government, called the exhibition - intended to showcase Tibet's achievements over the past 50 years - an achievement in itself.

"As a contributor to Tibet's development, I have a very strong sense of personal participation," he said.

"I hope more such exhibitions could be arranged for people of all ethnicities, and from all sectors and all countries.

"I hope they can come on site to learn about the real situation in Tibet - the region's gruesome and dark past, and the vast changes since then."

Tibet abolished serfdom in March 1959. That year, the central government began the Democratic Reform, emancipating serfs, who accounted for 95 percent of old Tibet's 1 million people, allowing them to work their own fields for the first time.

Legqog, chairman of the standing committee of the autonomous region's people's congress and a former serf, said old Tibet had "an extremely pitiful" human rights record.

"The Democratic Reform in Tibet is an important chapter in the history of global human rights development," the 65-year-old said.

"Its implications are no less than those of the abolitions of serfdom in the United States and Europe.

"Exhibitions and more comprehensive lessons are crucial to the education of our younger generations."

Tibet is set to celebrate its first Serfs Emancipation Day on March 28 - two months after its 382 legislators unanimously endorsed a bill adding the holiday to the calendar during the local people's congress' annual session in Lhasa.

(China Daily 03/09/2009 page3)