Tibet serf debate shadows China's "emancipation day"

By Emma Graham-Harrison

KHESUM, China (Reuters) - Lots of salty yak butter tea and an end to harsh beatings marked the start of the 1960s for farmer Kigya, who grew up shackled to the estate of a local nobleman by the inherited ties that once bound most Tibetans.

That world vanished overnight when Chinese troops flooded the Himalayan plateau in 1959 to quell an uprising, took direct control of government in Lhasa and rolled out radical changes.

China's Communist leaders say they abolished a feudal, theocratic system that would have been familiar to the peasants of mediaeval Europe. This Saturday they will launch an annual "Serf Emancipation Day" public holiday in Tibet to mark the dissolution of the serf system.

But critics say China has exaggerated the cruelty of traditional Tibetan life to disguise a power grab, swept away much that was good along with the bad, and destroyed an indigenous government that was attempting more sensitive reforms.

By commemorating its "emancipation" of Tibetans, China may enrage many already angry and frustrated Tibetans, who do not feel they enjoy true freedom under Chinese rule, analysts said. This may spark unrest at a volatile time, they added.

"It will be very provocative," said Tsering Shakya, a Tibet expert and research chair at the University of British Columbia. "People will be cowed into celebrating this holiday so this is a time when there may be more tension than early March."

This month Tibetans have marked the 50th anniversary of the flight into exile of the Dalai Lama, their still widely revered spiritual leader, and one year since deadly riots shook Lhasa and triggered waves of protests in ethnic Tibetan areas.

A huge security presence has kept the restive region largely calm, but there have been sporadic protests; a monk set himself on fire and a bomb was lobbed at an unfinished police station. Experts and activists say the unrest is likely to continue.

SERFS OR NOT?

Even the name of the new holiday is controversial. Opponents say "serfdom" is too loaded to describe the Tibetan system, while China denounces its critics as apologists for a cruel regime.

"The serfs and slaves, making up over 95 percent of the total population, suffered destitution, cruel oppression and exploitation and possessed no means of production or personal freedom whatsoever," a recent government white paper declared.

Few serious scholars contest that most Tibetans were bound by birth to estates held by nobles, monasteries or officials.

"The key characteristic of the system was that individuals did not have the right to opt out. They could not give back their land to the estate and live as free peasants," said Melvyn Goldstein, at Ohio University's Center for Research on Tibet.

But many foreign academics and exiled Tibetans also say Beijing has rewritten history, oversimplifying and distorting a complex system, in part by using transplanted concepts.

"The Chinese trick is to say the words 'serf' and 'feudal' and make us think brutal," said Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University.