China's Archives Administration (CAA) published on Sunday five contracts on exchanges or sales of serfs by their owners before the democratic reform of Tibet on its website, http://www.saac.gov.cn.
They indicated the lack of human rights in the old serfdom-reigned Tibet, said Yang Dongquan, director with the CAA.
One of the contracts, made in 1914, showed a serf owner named Gykangba paid his debt to another serf owner Rampa by parting with possession of four of his serfs, a mother and her three daughters.
"Now being unable to pay back the principal and interest of the military provisions borrowed from noble Rampa, I, Gykangba, shall use Qoizin Drolma and her three daughters as payment of the debt," the contract read.
"The four persons shall be in possession of Rampa from this day. I am willing to be punished for any violations of this contract," it said.
"From the contracts, we can see in the old serfdom-reigned Tibet, serfs were not only forced into slavery and labor, but also regarded as private possessions that can be traded or sold by their owners," Yang Dongquan said, adding that the serfs and slaves took up more then 95 percent of total population in the old Tibet.
"Even the serfs' children were destined to serve the owners the moment they were born," Yang said, quoting another contract of exchanging four female serfs and their offsprings in the Luduo Manor under the Drepung Monastery, one of Tibet's "great three" Gelukpa university monasteries on the suburbs of Lhasa, with three male serfs and their offsprings in the Sengong Manor of the same monastery.
It read, 'As decided through consultations between agents from the Sengong Manor and the Ludo Manor, Dorje Wangmo, Drolma Lhazom, Butri, and Lhazom, four female attendants of Sengong Ladrang in Ludo Manor and their offsprings, shall be exchanged with male attendants Baico, Losang and Dorje residing in Sengong Manor and their offsprings."
The other three documents published on Tuesday are the contract with which a Tibetan serf owner named Kaqui Tarawa sold her serf Kelsang Deje to Khendrung in 1922, the contract with which another Tibetan serf owner named Changsung sold a family of four under his ownership for 900 taels of silver worth of rifles in 1943, and the contract for exchanging serfs, including a 24-year-old mother and her baby daughter, between a Tibetan noble named La and another noble Rampa Gemxi in 1949.
All the five original contracts are now documented in the Tibet Autonomous Region Archives.
"These five contracts are but a small portion of similar documents kept in the Tibet Autonomous Region Archives. They are evidence of the pain and suffering brought by the serfdom system to the Tibetan people," Yang said.
(Xinhua News Agency June 9, 2008)