Independent Tibet – The Facts

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Foreign Bureau personnel

A Bureau of Foreign Affairs was established in 1909 [53] after the 13th Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa from Peking, and the Tibetan people, in symbolic rejection of Manchu rule, presented him with a new national seal. [54] The Foreign Bureau appears to have been reconstituted in 1941. [55] It conducted diplomatic relations with Britain, USA, Nepal, independent India and China. Nepal set up its legation in Lhasa in 1856, China in 1934 and Britain in 1936. Foreign ministry officials represented Tibet as an independent nation in the Inter-Asian Relations Conference convened in India March 23, 1947 to assess the status of Asia in the period following WWII. Tibet was also represented at the Afro-Asian Conference in 1948. Many participating nations were yet to be decolonized making Tibet one of the few established independent nations in that early pan-Asian gathering. [56]

A letter from the Foreign Bureau dated 2nd Nov 1949, to “Mr. Mautsetung”, describes Tibet as a religious nation, independent from “earliest times”, and requests the Communist leader to “issue strict orders” to his officers not to cross into Tibetan territory. Regarding Tibetan territory earlier annexed by China the letter states that “…the Tibetan government would like to open negotiations after the settlement of the Chinese Civil War.” [57]

Foreign Bureau letter to Mao Tsetung