A documentary film revealing social situations in Tibet before 1959 has been completed by the China Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio. With first-hand accounts of eye-witnesses and use of valuable historical video clips, it received high praise from Tibetology scholars at a symposium in Beijing on February 2.

The 25-minute documentary film, titled Past Affairs in Tibet, introduces Tibet's political, social, economic and religious conditions before 1959 through historical video materials and interviews with many eye-witnesses and scholars.
 
"It is necessary to record the actual situations and introduce them to outside audiences," Lhapa Phuntsok, director-general of the China Tibetology Research Center, said at the symposium.

With the passage of time, many senior Tibetans who experienced the old regime have also passed away; therefore, the younger generation has few impressions and little knowledge about Tibetan history.

"Those glorifying a feudal serf regime and defaming positive changes after 1959 absolutely go against the facts." Phuntsok hopes this documentary film can clarify the historical truth.

In the documentary film, Phuntsok, as a Tibetology expert, introduces the 13-Article Code and the 16-Article Code, which divided Tibetans into three classes and nine grades and legalized the rule of the Tibetan feudal regime.

Shesrab Nyima, vice president of the Central University for Nationalities, believes that these codes reflect stances of Tibet's ruling class at that time and serve to guard their interests.

"These codes deprived common Tibetan people of their basic rights and dignity, and tried to secure the hierarchy of three classes and nine grades by cruel punishments. Under such circumstances, the human rights of the majority of laboring people were out of the question," he said.
 
"The documentary is very convincing as it delivers lively facts," commented Tenzin Ganpa, vice director-general of China Tibetology Research Center. Ganpa saw beggars crowding the streets when he was a teenager.

"My father served the Sangpho family in the documentary film for his entire life. Being too old to work, he was driven away from manor and became homeless. The documentary says the manor had over 1,000 rooms, but there was not even a shabby room for us," he said.
 
Tenzin Lhundrub, a researcher from the China Tibetology Research Center, tracked the lives of people who lived in Snow Village, a small village at the foot of Potola Palace, from 1988 to 1998. He was astonished at the massive bondage of Tibetan people before 1959. Local residents of early generations there had served the palace since it was first established over 300 years ago, doing house cleaning, making handcrafts and running numerous errands.

"My research finds that under the feudal serf system, it was impossible for local residents to change their identities and fates except by entering into Tibetan Buddhism," Tenzin pointed out.

Zhalho, associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that high-rank officials in the feudal Tibetan regime knew the outside world well, but they refused to adopt any advanced management system.

His statistics show that Tibetan people used half of their wages to pay all kinds of taxes or run errands, but the ruling class provided few public services, such as education and medicare for instance, for its people. Instead, money collected was mainly used to maintain the operations of its regime.

"Those praising such an exploitative system are really self-deceiving," he said.