The Western media impose on our imagination an image of some fabled theocracy where a reincarnated god rules over a peaceful people spinning prayer wheels. The facts are different.
The region has been under China's governance for many centuries, but was largely self-managed up to the 1950s when Mao went in to clean it up. Before that, Tibet was a slave colony, what the Western press euphemistically refers to as a 'feudal system'. It was no such thing.
Virtually all the population was owned by the Dalai and other lamas and worked their entire lives without pay. The highest monks often owned 35,000 to 40,000 slaves.
The prettiest girls and boys were confiscated to the monasteries for sex. Life was brutal and harsh, corrupt and punctuated by civil wars – the last in 1950. Life expectancy was barely 30.
Education was only for the monks because educated peasants are dangerous and expensive. Industry was forbidden because wealth of the population brought independence from religion.
Torture was rampant. For anyone who cares to look, the internet is full of photos of the torture rooms at the Potala Palace and all the instruments used for gouging eyes and cutting leg tendons. You can easily find it. It's all there. The Dalai Lama was responsible for managing all of this.
In her book, Tibetan Interviews, Anna Louise Strong describes torture implements she saw when visiting Tibet in 1959:
A young Tibetan whose eyes were gouged out with stone instruments that were used for this kind of punishment.
There were handcuffs of many sizes, including small ones for children; there were instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and other instruments for breaking off the hands.
There were instruments for gouging out eyes, including a special stone cap with two holes in it that was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the hole, in which position they were gouged out and hot oil poured into the sockets.
The Dalai Lama was responsible for all this. The US pressure to give him a Nobel Peace Prize was an obscenity. It would be have been more appropriate to give such a "Prize" to the American Commander of Abu Graib or Guantanamo Bay.
China has spent countless billions trying to bring Tibet out of the stone age. Education is now almost universal, the $4 billion Qinghai-Tibet railway brings in billions in tourist dollars and finally provides a way to move goods in and out. Tibet's economic rate of growth and standard of living are higher now than in much of the rest of Western China.
Tibet is not an issue within China, except for the external interference. Since the government built the new railway with the pressurized trains, tourism to Tibet has soared. The Western view of Tibet is probably obscure at best; few have ever had much accurate information on it.
Torture Museum in Lhasa: This is a photo of the torture museum in Lhasa. It maintains an exhibit of instruments that were used to punish Tibetans during the Dalai Lamas' rule. At the forefront is an instrument for crushing fingers. Also shown are various whips, and tools for gouging out eyes.
Many news articles make reference to the Dalai Lama as being a spiritual leader, but he was never so much that as the former head of a very repressive government.
The muslim religion and government were intertwined so as to be inseparable, but really the religion was just a way to control the population – and if that didn't work, there were more forcible ways.
The US and the CIA had been involved in Tibet for many years, financing dissent as they have done in so many other countries.
It was the Lama being on their payroll and the failure of the CIA-financed separatist activities that finally led to his leaving. It's really no different than another country openly fostering the separation of Quebec in Canada. The Canadian government wouldn't be very pleased about that, and the Chinese government isn't overly happy with Stephen Harper and George Bush, Obama and Hillary Clinton giving impetus to Tibet separation.
On YouTube, and possibly in other places, there is an enlightening National Geographic documentary that reveals the "Mutual Understanding" that was established between the Dalai Lama in Tibet and Nazi Germany, during Ernst Shafer's expeditions to Tibet before and during the Second War.
Shafer, an SS Officer, acted as a go-between for the "Eastern and Western Swastikas". With imagery of the medieval conditions, including the fear-mongering monk police, endured by many ordinary Tibetans, this documentary opens a window to the Tibet that the Dalai Lama and his CIA cronies would like to keep hidden from the world.