Serf emancipation day

A week after some tens of thousands of Tibetans voted to elect a political successor to the Dalai Lama – an landmark event ignored by China’s media – China celebrated its own Tibetan event. Monday marked what the PRC calls “Tibetan Serf Liberation Day,” the 52nd anniversary of its overthrow of the Dalai Lama.

The occasion, designated just three years ago, is noted in some years with a bit more flair than others, depending on the political climate. This year, the Xinhua news agency published a series of photos and a story about Tibet’s economic development in China, and even quoted a former serf.

“The first 50 years of my life were dark and with no dignity,” Xinhua quoted a woman called Tsering Chodron, a former serf, as saying. “My life as a human began only after 1959.”

A government official in Lhasa was quoted as calling the date “a glorious page in the history of human rights.” Meanwhile, there's the monk who died earlier this month after setting himself on fire in Tibet to protest Chinese rule.

Such is the yawning chasm of understanding and politics that separate China and the rest of the world on Tibet. China presents itself as a liberator; Tibetan groups see it as an oppressor.