Crunchy lawyers would like Tibet to free from the PRC social engineering mass in-migration of ethnic Han people with the express intent of effecting the human and cultural genocide of the Tibetan people, free, as we in the West understand the term, in expression and self determination, and free to be ruled however determined by the will of the indigenous peoples of Tibet themselves.
The historic governance of Tibet by it’s indigenous Buddhist leaders was indeed autocratic and a society of wealthy elites and common poor people. I would suggest that it was no more, and perhaps less, autocratic than our government structures in the West, notwithstanding the façade of *democratic* (however any of us may have chosen to define the term) elections. It was also always a form of governance determined by the free will of the people of Tibet.
To suggest, in any way, that *freeing them* from their current plight under PRC and restoring rule by the Tibetan Buddhist leadership would return them to a condition that is, in any way, of comparable oppression is absurd and sounds like a talking point of PRC propaganda.
The grotesque circumstance of the PRC kidnap and effected disappearance of the Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in 1995 is more evidence than anyone should need on the relative merits of the positions of the Tibetan people vs the PRC.
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