Witness: Reporting on the Dalai Lama's escape to India

-- Adrienne Farrell spent the war in the naval section at Bletchley Park, where the German Enigma code was broken. She joined Reuters in 1945 and became a foreign correspondent in Switzerland, Italy and India. Peter Jackson was an officer in the Royal Navy and joined Reuters as foreign correspondent in Pakistan, India and Italy. They met when Peter scooped the first interviews with Hillary and Tenzing after their successful ascent of Everest in 1953. After marriage they worked together in India. In 1959, Jackson and Farrell scooped other media outlets with their exclusive reports about the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet in a dust-storm and his arrival in India. Peter became interested in India's wildlife and left Reuters in 1970 to work for conservation of the world's wild cats, particularly the tiger. --

By Peter Jackson

LONDON (Reuters) - As Reuters correspondents in Delhi, my wife, Adrienne Farrell, and I met the Dalai Lama in November 1956, when he visited India for the celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha.

At a reception we introduced our four-month-old daughter, Paddy, to him, and she gave him a chrysanthemum. He signed a photograph of the meeting for us.

"We were amused then by the sophistication of the Tibetans with the Dalai Lama ... When we referred to the Dalai Lama as 'His Holiness', they replied: 'Oh, you mean the DL'."

In 1980, I visited the Potala, his famous palace overlooking Lhasa. The palace was empty but in a courtyard there were many Tibetans. I showed them the photo and they were overcome. Some bent and kissed it, with tears in their eyes.

The Chinese had already moved into Tibet in 1951, claiming it as Chinese. Tibetans were opposed to the Chinese from the beginning of the occupation. By 1958 the Khampa people of eastern Tibet and neighbors in Amdo, known as Qinghai in Chinese, had launched an insurgency, which spread to the capital, Lhasa.

In the following year, armed rebels roamed the streets of Lhasa as the city prepared for a religious celebration in March that the Dalai Lama was scheduled to attend. But a Chinese official demanded that the Dalai Lama instead attend a theatrical performance in a Chinese camp, alone.

Fearing that the Chinese would seize the Dalai Lama, crowds of Tibetans, some armed, surrounded the Norbulingka Palace, where the Dalai Lama was staying. He decided to escape to India.

On 17 March 1959, he dressed as a Tibetan layman, and slung a rifle over his shoulder. With a dust storm providing cover, he walked out, unrecognized, from the palace.

The Dalai Lama and his officials, who had also escaped from the palace, rode out of the city on horses to join his family for the trek to India.

Two days later, the Chinese discovered he had escaped. They closed the borders with India and Bhutan and sent troops to catch him. None of that was known to the outside world.

The world had heard only a few rumors of troubles in Tibet, but the Indian government was being informed by its diplomats in Lhasa.

On March 18, an Indian journalist, Shri Krishna, who had contacts with senior members of the Indian government, called us urgently to his house. He told us that there had been riots in Lhasa and that the Dalai Lama had escaped and was heading for the Indian frontier. We broke the news in a Reuters report.

THE SCOOP

After nearly two weeks trekking, the Dalai Lama and his party reached the Indian frontier.