Under the auspices of Chairman Mao Zedong, the new People's Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1950. The Chinese government and military destroyed thousands of monasteries and libraries, set up hundreds of brothels for the troops, moved in ethnic Han Chinese families, plundered natural resources, desecrated religious icons, and reportedly forced monks and nuns to have sex with one another. By the decade's end, through starvation, imprisonment, torture, and enslavement, one million Tibetans were dead and the Himalayan community had been ethnically cleansed and colonized. The United Nations did nothing. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, and thousands of Tibetans live in exile in India, the United States, and other parts of the world.
In the photo above the Dalai Lama meets with Mao in 1956 to discuss the Chinese "liberation" of Tibet, a backward monarchy poisoned by religion. "We welcome you back to the fatherland," says a sinister Mao in the movie Kundun.
