So-called "Tibet independence" is a daydream of separatists and such a concept never existed in history, a Tibetan lawmaker, also a living Buddha, said Friday.
Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak, head of a five-member Tibetan legislative delegation, told a press conference after the delegation's trip to the United States and Canada over the past two weeks, that the region had witnessed great changes and received support from the central government and other parts of China after Democratic Reform in Tibet in 1959.
"Do you think Tibetans still want independence?"
He said a video, made public online recently by the Dalai Lama's "Tibetan government-in-exile" that showed Chinese police "using excessive force" last March, was to "deceive the public who do not know the truth."
An official from Tibet had said the video was a lie. The official said technology experts found that the video and audio had been edited using material involving different places, times and people.
Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak said the Dalai Lama used the word "peaceful protest" to describe the March 14 riot but local people's lives and property were threatened and 18 people died during the riot.
"When lives or property are damaged and the production order is affected, it's inappropriate for the government not to take any action," he said.
"Some foreign friends we met in the United States and Canada tell us the March 28 Serfs Emancipation Day has the same significance with the Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the United States and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s."
"Tibetans did not have human rights before 1959," he said. "The post-1959 period is Tibet's best time."
The living Buddha said in the past "if a family has three sons, the second son must be sent to a monastery. If poor people wore cassock and became a monk, they were still oppressed in serfdom society."
(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2009)