Independent Tibet – The Facts

FUNCTIONING STATE

Great Seal of the Dalai Lama presented to him by the Tibetan National Assembly in 1909

Tibet was a fully functioning and independent state before the Chinese invasion. It threatened none of its neighbors, fed its population unfailingly, year after year, with no help from the outside world, and owed nothing to any country or international institution. Although insular, theocratic and not a modern democracy, Tibet maintained law and order within its borders and conscientiously observed treaties and conventions entered into with other nations. It was one of the earliest countries to enact laws to protect wildlife and the environment – recurrently cited in the “Mountain Valley Edicts” issued since 1642 [1], and possibly earlier. [2]

Tibet abolished capital punishment in 1913 (noted by many foreign travelers [3]) and was one of the first nations in the world to do so. There is no record of it persecuting minorities (e.g. Muslims [4]) or massacring sections of its population from time to time as China (remember Tiananmen) still does. Although Tibet ’s frontiers with India, Nepal and Bhutan were completely unguarded and Tibetans were “great travelers” [5], very few Tibetans fled their country as economic or political refugees. There was not a single Tibetan immigrant in the USA or Europe before the Communist invasion.

Tibetan soldiers with national flags