66th Anniversary Timeline
1950
Oct 01
40,000 Chinese troops invaded Tibet; an independent nation the size of Western Europe.
1951
May 23
China consolidated its military occupation of Tibet forcing the Tibetan government to sign the ’17 Point Agreement’.
1959
Mar 10
Tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, rising up against China’s illegal invasion and occupation of their homeland.
Mar 12
15,000 unarmed Tibetan women came together and rose up against the forced occupation of Tibet by the communist Chinese government.
Mar 30
Apr 01
Three resolutions raising grave concern at the suppression of fundamental human rights in Tibet were passed by the UN.
1960
Jan 01
China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.
1966
Jan 01
Chairman Mao’s communism campaign led to the destruction of 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and cultural sites.
1987
Sep 21
The Dalai Lama presented his ‘Five Point Peace Plan’ as a solution to the situation; China flatly rejected his proposals.
Sep 23
In response to China’s rejection of the Dalai Lama’s ‘Peace Plan’, large protests broke out in Lhasa.
1988
Mar 01
Sep 01
Dec 01
A well-planned protest erupted in Lhasa. Chinese police opened fire on protesters, including foreigners, and Dutch national Christa Meindersma who was shot in the shoulder.
PHOTO – Tibet Watch
1989
Mar 10
Widespread protests broke out in Lhasa with tens of thousands of Tibetans taking to the streets. Chinese used brutal force to quell the protests, expelling all foreigners and declaring martial law.
Dec 10
1995
Jan 01
Six year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognised as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. He was kidnapped by Chinese authorities becoming the world’s youngest political prisoner. He remains missing today.
1996
Jan 01
Religious repression across Tibet intensified and China launched a brutal patriotic re-education campaign.
2001
Jan 01
2007
Oct 01
The Dalai Lama received the US Congressional Gold Medal. As Tibetans celebrated the award, China marshalled troops in a show of force
2008
Mar 10
Tibetan Uprising – Protests broke out in Lhasa and rippled across Tibet. Hundreds of Tibetans were killed and over 2,000 arrested.
Aug 01
China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Pro-Tibetan protests took place around the globe including in Beijing.
2009
Feb 01
In February 2009 a young monk named Tapey set fire to himself in Ngaba, eastern Tibet.
Over the next 9 years, more than 150 Tibetans in Tibet self-immolated, protesting China’s rule in Tibet, the majority dying as a result.
2019
Mar 10
Large protests continue sporadically across Tibet but Tibetans have sought new ways to defend their identity and basic rights; environmental protection, student protests, cultural resistance with music, poems and writings celebrating Tibet’s culture and nationhood.
2020
Jan 01
Rights experts have analysed that torture in Tibet is endemic and is used systemically and routinely by Chinese authorities against Tibetans in custody. An alarming number of Tibetans continue to die in custody or shortly after release from detention, and incriminating signs of torture and other clues to the reasons for death raise serious concern.
2021
Jan 01
Chinese government’s tolerance for Tibetans’ rights has diminished dramatically in recent years and we have seen a marked increase in state control over everyday life, an escalation in the criminalization of nonviolent forms of protest, and a heavy crackdown against freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Since February 2021, Beijing has escalated a crackdown across Tibet and a new wave of arrests, including the detention of a number of prominent Tibetans.
2022
Jan 01
Chinese government policies are forcing three out of four Tibetan students into a vast network of colonial boarding schools, separating 800,000-900,000 children aged 6-18 from their families and communities. This number does not include an additional, unknown number of four- and five-year olds. The schools are a cornerstone of Xi Jinping’s campaign to eliminate Tibetan identity and supplant it with a Chinese nationalist identity in order to neutralize any resistance to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule.
2023
Jan 01
China is accelerating an elaborate strategy to co-opt the reincarnation of one of the world’s best-loved and most deeply revered spiritual leaders, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is the most important religious and secular figure for the Tibetan people and is central to the future of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
Newly discovered, internal CCP briefings reveal that Beijing has developed a public relations strategy targeting Western governments and media outlets involving a plan to end international support for Tibet in what they term the ‘post Dalai era’. Part of this plan includes installing their own Dalai Lama candidate.
China views control over Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation as a critical component in its efforts to secure authority in Tibet, eliminate Tibet’s linguistic, cultural, and religious identity, and build influence and dominance across the Buddhist world. A precedent was set in 1995 by Beijing’s seizure and disappearance of the young boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, recognised by the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama, and the installation of their candidate, Gyaltsen Norbu.
2024
Jan 01
China faced an unprecedented challenge to its human rights violations in Tibet during its 4th Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Review in January 2024, in what Tibet advocates hailed as a “landmark” session at the United Nations.
At least 20 UN Member States used China’s UPR in Geneva to raise uncompromising recommendations about the deteriorating human rights situation in Tibet. The rise in governments raising Tibet has increased two-fold since China’s last UPR in 2018 and is up almost five-fold since China’s first UPR in 2009, signalling the severe worsening of the human rights situation on the ground, as China continues to deny independent UN human rights monitors access to the country.
Among governments’ recommendations to China were that it end the residential boarding school system in Tibet; to end forced labour and coercive labour transfer in Tibet; to grant the UN full and unfettered access to Tibet; to guarantee access to Tibetan language education [in every aspect of their schooling]; and to respect the rights to freedom of religion, or belief, opinion, and expression, peaceful assembly and culture in Tibet.
2025
Feb 14
It’s been one years since, more than 1,000 Tibetans, including monks, were arrested following protests against the building of a hydropower dam on the Drichu River in Kham, Eastern Tibet, which will forcibly displace residents of two villages and submerge six monasteries, and will also affect the local ecology.
Protests on this scale in occupied Tibet are rare due to the Chinese government’s extreme punishment.
