The Thirteenth Dalai Lama

13th dalai lama

Torture and Execution Ordered by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama

Throughout the time of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, various foreign journalists, officials and explorers visited Tibet and were astounded by the atrocities that met them in place of their expectations of the supposed ‘Shangri-la’. They published accounts of what they saw, and from these works we can gain a more accurate insight into the actual brutality of the theocracy and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s role in it.

Quotes
Photos
References
Also see...

[The 13th Dalai Lama's rule] was signalised by numerous proscriptions, banishments, imprisonings, and torturings. Neither life nor property was safe for a moment.

The Opening of Tibet
Perceval Landon

Sharpened bamboos were driven under the finger-nails, a punishment introduced into Tibet by the Manchus. Numerous floggings were inflicted with rods of willow on the bared back and buttocks, each of a hundred lashes or more.

Portrait of a Dalai Lama
Sir Charles Bell describing punishment ordered by the 13th Dalai Lama

The Tibetan criminal code is drastic. In addition to fines and imprisonment, floggings are frequent, not only of people after they have been convicted of an offence, but also of accused persons, and indeed witnesses, during the course of the trial. For serious offences, use is made of the pillory as well as of the cangue, which latter is a heavy square wooden board round the neck. Iron fetters are fastened on the legs of murderers and inveterate burglars. For very serious or repeated offences, such as murder, violent robbery, repeated thefts, or serious forgery, the hand may be cut off at the wrist, the nose sliced off, or even the eyes gouged out, the last more likely for some heinous political crime. In former days those convicted of murder were put into a leather sack, which was sewn up and thrown into a river.

Portrait of a Dalai Lama
Sir Charles Bell describing legal system under the 13th Dalai Lama

It is a sin for a Buddhist to take a share in destroying life, a great sin for a lama, and a terribly great sin for the highest of all lamas.

Portrait of a Dalai Lama
Prince of Sikkim commenting on executions ordered by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama was indeed an absolute dictator; more so as regards his own country than Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini in theirs.

Portrait of a Dalai Lama
Sir Charles Bell

Charles Bell, A Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth (London: Wisdom Publications, 1987), 70 & 72.

Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet Volume 1: 1913-1951 The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California, 1989), 49-50.

Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon – China, Tibet and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 27-8.

K. Dhondup, The Water-bird and Other Years: A History of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and After (New Delhi: Rangwang Publishers, 1986), 39.

Thirteenth Dalai Lama, ‘Political Testament’, quoted in Inder L. Malik, Dalai Lamas of Tibet: Succession of Births (New Delhi: Uppal Publishing House, 1984), 51.

The full document can be found online here.

Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet: An Account of Lhasa and the Country and People of Central Tibet and of the Progress of the Mission Sent There by the English Government in the Year 1903-4 (London: Doubleday Page & Co., 1905), 116.

L. Austine Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries (London: Methuen & Co, 1929), 7-9, where it recounts that even the Lama’s relatives were imprisoned for life.

Alan Winnington, Tibet: Record of a Journey (London: Lawrence & Wisheart 1957), 98-9.

A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet (New York & London: M.E. Sharpe 1996), 24.

Robert W. Ford, Wind Between the Worlds: Captured in Tibet (1957) 37.

[The complete Life Magazine article from November 13, 1950 is available online]

Anna Louise Strong, When Serfs stood up in Tibet (Peking: New World Press, 1960) Chapter 8.

Also see...

The Western Shugden Society has based its research on the works of respected and independent scholars, investigative journalists and on original source material to demonstrate its position. Some of this material is freely available on the internet. Wherever possible we have provided links to the original documents or means to access them. We invite you to investigate them for yourself.

Tibetan in a cangue

A young Tibetan whose eyes were gouged out

A Tibetan herdsman whose hands were cut off

Mutilation in old Tibet

Public Torture in Lhasa - part 1