Excerpts from "Captured in Tibet"

by Robert Ford

Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, Oxford, New York 1990

Blurb from the publisher

In 1950 Robert Ford was working as a radio officer for the Government of Tibet, and was one of the very few Westerners to witness the Chinese invasion which took place late that year. His loyalty to Tibet led to his being taken prisoner by the Chinese and held in captivity for five years, accused of espionage, anti-communist propaganda, and murder.

In his book, first published in 1957, the author recounts his experiences of bringing radio communications to Tibet, presents a revealing picture of Tibet and its people in the last years of independence, and writes movingly of his years in captivity.

Part One: The Threat (Page 11)
Chapter 7: Border Question (Page 83 to 93)
Page 86
"Then we shall appeal for help."
"Then it will be too late. You haven't even told the world you consider yourselves independent now."
"Surely we showed that when we expelled the Chinese officials last summer?"
"You showed your neutrality in the Chinese Civil War, that's all. At least, that is how it was interpreted by other countries."
"But aren't we showing it now by refusing to go to Peking? Our delegation has been in India since the beginning of the year, trying to negotiate with the Chinese and always refusing to go to their country."

I tried to think of a Tibetan equivalent for 'sitting on the fence,'and then thought better of it. I had always been careful not to interfere in Tibetan politics, and I would not have said as much as I did (Page 87) if Tharchi had stopped throwing questions at me. But he still persisted.
"What do you think we should do then?" he asked.
"There are only two things you can do," I said. "Either proclaim that you are an independent state and determined to remain so, or go to Peking and get the best terms you can. Either would be better than just sitting and waiting to be swallowed up."
"But surely everyone knows Tibet is an independent state?".
That was the trouble. Everyone did not know. Under international law the question of Tibet's sovereignty was ambiguous and confused.
The fact of Tibet's independence was beyond doubt. Except for two short periods of Chinese rule, both of which were ended by a national revolt, Tibet had been an autonomous state for centuries. Under the Manchu dynasty the Chinese had exercised a vague and remote suzerainty, based on a personal relationship between the Chinese Emperor and the Dalai Lama; but that had ended with the Chinese Revolution of 1911. Since then Tibet had been completely independent.
In 1913 Tibetan, Chinese, and British representatives met at Simla and initialled a convention under which Tibet recognized Chinese suzerainty on condition that China recognized Tibetan autonomy; in other words, nominal suzerainty in exchange for practical independence. But they could not agree on the frontier, and in the end the Chinese refused to sign. Tibet continued to enjoy de facto independence, and China continued to claim a suzerainty that she was unable to enforce. She also denied Tibet's right to autonomy. Even in Formosa, Chiang Kai-shek maintained that Tibet was simply a province of China. It was the one subject on which he and Mao Tse-tung agreed.

Britain recognized Tibet's independence, and so did most other countries - unofficially; officially the question never arose. For Tibet never sought recognition, never wanted to exchange ambassadors or open diplomatic relations, held herself aloof from all other nations.
"Doesn't that show that all we want is to be left alone?" said Tharchi Tsedron. "And isn't that our right?"
"Yes, Tharchi," I answered. "Morally there is no argument. I was talking about whether you are likely to get any help. That Tibet deserves help is obvious. I don't think I should be staying here if it wasn't."

(Page 88)
"You are not in Tibet at all. Chamdo is in China. I've looked it up in an atlas."
If I heard that once I heard it a hundred times. And it was very hard to convince British and American radio amateurs that their atlases were wrong.
"But it's a new atlas. It was published this year."
"I didn't say it was out of date. I said it was wrong."
"But it's my son's school atlas. He's is learning geography with this."
"Then he's learning it wrong."
Their interest was not just academic. Many of them were trying to qualify for a "Worked All Zones" certificate that was issued by an American radio magazine to any amateur who could prove that he had been in contact with every zone in the world. For this purpose the world was divided into forty zones, and Zone 23 was the whole of Tibet. It was the hardest to work. As Fox was not doing much amateur radio now - he was a very sick man - radio 'hams' were at first jubilant when they made contact with me. Then they looked Chamdo up in their atlases, and became reproachful or annoyed.
I sent a message to the Radio Society of Great Britain and the Radio relay League in America pointing out that the atlases were wrong.
"What's your authority for saying Chamdo is in Tibet?" one contact asked me.
"I am in Chamdo, and I'm employed by the Tibetan Government. I'm the first European to stay here for over thirty years. The last was Sir Eric Teichmann, and the boundary-lines on his maps are still pretty well right. Yours were always wrong."
"Who put them in, then?"
"The Chinese."
Chamdo had always been part of Tibet, although for one brief period (1910-18) it had been under Chinese military occupation. Before then the Sino-Tibetan frontier had changed frequently, but it had never come as far west as Chamdo.
Chamdo had fallen to the Chinese when they invaded Tibet in 1910, and it had come under the rule of a Frontier Commissioner named Chao Erh-Feng. Khnechi Dawala still remembered him by his nickname of "Butcher Chao," which he had earned for his habit of ordering wholesale excutions. He had been butchered himself, by his fellow-countrymen, in the Revolution of 1911, when the (Page 89) Chinese were thrown out of Lhasa and most of Kham. But they succeeded in holding Chamdo until it was liberated in 1918 after the Chinese had engaged in fresh aggression against Tibet with disastrous results for themselves.
"We could have liberated the whole of Tibet then," said Khenchi Dawala, referring to the provinces of Sikang and Chinghai. "Lord Teichman stopped us from going on."
Mr. Teichman, who was later knighted, had admitted this himself.

Page 89
"After the talks broke down the Chinese recognized their own claim and published their map for the whole world to see. The Tibetans had no maps that were even publishable. China had diplomatic relations with other nations of the world. Tibet had not. The Chinese map was follwoed by map-makers in other countries, including Britain, and that is why the atlases were wrong.
All of which was difficult to explain to numerous radio amateurs who told me I was not in Tibet. (...)

Part Two: Invasion (Page 108)
Chapter 9: The Battle for Kham (Page 108 - 120)
Page 114
Between schedules I listened to news bulletins from all over the world, but there was still nothing about the attack on Tibet. The Radio Lhasa went on the air.

While Fox was away there was no news in English, but I continued to relay the news in Tibetan and Chinese. Horkhang Sé and several other Lhasa officials came to listen that day.
Not a word was said about the invasion.
"I don't understand," I said when it was over. "The Chinese have attacked Tibet. Tibet wants help. Peking is silent for obvious reasons. What on earth can Lhasa gain by pretending the war does not exist?"
No one answered. (...)

Page 115
I had not heard the rumours, which had begun in the political gossip-factory of Kalimpong. It seemed that on the Wednesday, even before the first messenger from Rangsum reached Chamdo, a correspondent of the Statesman filed a report that the Chinese had invaded Tibet from Chinghai and reached the pass of Dongma, just north of Riwoche.
The story was obviously false, and All-India Radio quoted the leader of the Tibetan delegation as saying that it was simply "a belated account brought by traders of a minor incident that occured four months ago." Probably it was: it could have taken as long as that for news of the Dengko incident to reach Kalimpong, and the geographical error was normal. But for the Tibetan delegation to deny that there had been Chinese aggression several days after the news of the invasion had reached Lhasa could only mean either that the delegation had not been informed or that it had been told to keep quiet.
The actions of Lhasa Government would have been easier to understand if it had intended to offer only a token resistence to the Chinese and then sue for peace, but it was not doing anything of the kind. The resistence was real, and Tibet's subsequent appeal to the United Nations showed that there was never any question of surrender. I could only think it was a matter of habit. The Lhasa Government was so used to the policy of saying nothing that might offend or provoke the Chinese that it kept it on after provocation had become irrelevant. It was still trying to avert a war that had already broken out.
What depressed me most was that no one outside Tibet was likely to understand this. When the news came out the obvious interpretation would be that Tibet had no real will to resist. (...)

Page 119
Late in the afternoon Khenchi Dawala came to see me. He had come to say good-bye.
"Will you leave Tibet now?" he asked.
"Not as long as you go on fighting."
"Go now, and tell the world that we are fighting. You are the (Page 120) only one who knows. Tell them we are not Chinese but an independent nation, and want to remain independent and free. Am I asking you to tell more than the truth?"
"No," I said. "I know all this is true. Yes, I shall tell the world."
"We may loose this war," said Khenchi Dawala slowly. "I know we are not likely to get help now, or even in the spring. I know that without help we are bound to lose in the end. The Chinese are clever and strong. If they could cross the Upper Yangtze they can cross the Salween. If they could beat Khatang Depön on the way to Chamdo they can also fight their way to Lhasa. They may occupy the whole of our land. But even if they do our struggle will not have been in vain. This is a war worth fighting to win and even worth fighting and losing; for defeat is not final when the fighting stops."
His voice was low when he spoke of defeat, but now he spoke more strongly.
"We lost against the Chinese in 1910, and they occupied the whole land then," he said. "I was young, and the future looked hopeless; and all round me there were men who said Tibet would never be free again. It would need a miracle. A year later we had that miracle, in the Chinese Revolution. We seized our chance and threw the Chinese out, and for the next forty years we were free. Now the Chinese have had another revolution, and have attacked us again. Why should we think they have had their last civil war? Chiang Kai-shek may attack them from Formosa - he is no friend of ours, but if we also fight these Communists he will want our friendship.
"We should not have become free in 1911 if we had not fought in 1910. If we did not fight now it would be the end of Tibet. We may have to wait longer than last time. For most of the country it was only a year - although in Chamdo we had to wait eight. Next time it may be ten, or fifteen, twenty, fifty or more; but so long as we remember that they came by force, our will to be free will survive. We shall become free again because the gods are on our side. But tell the world, Phodo Kusho, that we did not run away."
I promised I would. I did not have the chance then, but I am trying to keep that promise now. (...)

Chapter 11: Return to Chamdo (Page 137 - 150)
Page 141
There it was. Not a word about land reform or the rights of the peasants and the working class. The Chinese were backing the officials. (...)

Page 146
Altogether Liu questioned me for about sixteen hours. There were breaks for meals, and I had a good night's sleep; and if I was tired at the end of the questioning I have no doubt Liu was too. He never used unfair pressure or threats. Only once did he raise his voice in anger. That was when he asked me about the foreigners I had met in Lhasa, and I mentioned some Chinese.
"We are not foreigners!" he shouted. "The Chinese and Tibetans are one people. You are the foreigners, and you have kept us apart." (...)

Chapter 12: Journey to the East (151 - 163)
Page 162
Now that we had almost reached the eastern limit of Sikang I had my first indication that we were in China, and not just Tibetan territory ruled by the Chinese. I saw Chinese houses, with Chinese lettering on the doorposts, and men carrying pails of water suspended from bamboo poles in the Chinese way. But there were also Tibetans, prayer-wheels and prayer-flags, and there was a monastery on the outskirts of the town. I also saw a cross on top of the Roman Catholic Church. (...)

Page 163
Soon after Yaan we came to the frontier between the provinces of Sikang and Szechwan. The boundary was marked by Chinese characters painted on a rock by the side of the road. The next day we began to cross the Szechwan plains, green and fertile lowlands, intensely cultivated and, after the sparsely populated plateau of Tibet, teeming with people. (...)

Part Three: In Goal (Page 164)
Chapter 13: Interrogation (164 - 178)
Page 165
"I must explain to you," said the chief interrogator, "the policy of the People's Government towards criminals. It is a policy of liniency on the one hand; on the other hand, suppression. The choice lies with you. If you confess your crimes freely we shall try to help you to make yourself fit to re-enter society. If you remain stubborn you will be utterly suppressed."
He paused to let this sink in.
"You are not entirely to blame for your offences against the people," he went on, "and we take this into consideration. You are largely a victim of the society in which you were brought up, although you must bear part of the guilt yourself. You can only expiate this if you achieve a correct social outlook and, through re-education, eradicate the basic errors of thought that caused you to commit your crimes. Do you understand?"
"I think," I said, "that there has been a misunderstanding. I am not a criminal. I was employed by the Tibetan Government in a purely technical capacity. I have given a full account of my activities in Tibet, and when you have all the facts you will find that I have told you the whole truth." (...)

Page 165
"What did you think of the liberation of Tibet?"
"I thought the Tibetans did not want to be liberated."
"Did you advise them to resist?"
"They did not ask my advice."
"Answer yes or no."
"No."
"Did you help them to resist?"
"I continued my technical duties as a Tibetan Government official." (...)

Page 169
The Tibetans always played off the Chinese and British against (Page 170) each other. It was their obvious policy if they were to keep their independence, and that was their only aim. They had the misfortune to be sandwiched between two Powers that regarded each other with mistrust and fear. Chinas Tibetan policy was governed by similar motives to Britains: she wanted to keep her trade monopoly; and especially she wanted to secure her sout-west frontier from British imperialism, of which she already had bitter experience. The difference was that China wanted control over Tibet, while Britain sought only an autonomous buffer-state. Britain could thus champion Tibetan independence; but, as Sir Charles Bell pointed out, it was difficult to answer the Chinese when they asked why we thought home rule a good thing for Tibet but not for India.

But all this was history now, and British interest in Tibet had ended with the Transfer of Power. (...)

Chapter 15: The Small Dark Room (Page 187 - 199)
Page 190
Suddenly Kao changed his tactics.
"I cant waste any more time on you," he said at the end of a long and fruitless interrogation. "I shant send for you again. You can go back to your room and rot."

It was the right place to rot.
The whistle went at dawn, and that was the signal for me to sit on the platform that served as my bed. I had to remain sitting there until the whistle went again at ten oclock at night.
Sixteen hours of sitting. I was not allowed to stand, or lie, or even lean back. If I rested my head on my pillow I was bellowed at by the guards, who patrolled the corridor with their tommy-guns day and night and passed my cell every few minutes. (...)

Chapter 17: Confession (Page 207 - 216)
Page 207
Why did I confess to crimes that I had not committed?
Most people who ask me this expect me to say that I was physically tortured into making a false confession. I was not. It would even be inaccurate to say my confession was due to the mental torture I had to bear; for the purpose of that was to draw out what my captors believed to be the truth. This was a contributory factor to the extent that it made my ordeal worse and therefore increased my desire to get out, but that is all.
Other people expect me to say that it was a result of indoctrination: that I was persuaded to believe I had committed the crimes to which I confessed. There is no truth in that, either. It is true that eventually I was seduced part of the way to Communism, but at the time of my confession the degree of contamination was very slight.
I made a false confession simply because I thought it gave me the best chance of getting out: indeed, the only chance.

They told me many lies, made threats and delivered ultimatums never fulfilled; but one thing they said I was sure was true.
"No one ist released until he has confessed," said Fan. "No one ever has been, and no one ever will be."
I had no doubt that the British Govrenment was trying to obtain my release, as indeed it was. I was equally sure that the Chinese would not respond to such representations unless it became politically expedient. It was unlikely that it would. Therefore if I was to get out I had to do it under my own steam.
"Confess your crime and live! Hide it and die!" shouted one of the slogans pasted on the walls of the interrogation huts outside the prison where I was sometimes taken. (...)

Page 208
True to my British upbringing, I wondered if it was possible to reach a compromise.
Any false confession I made would have to satisfy four conditions.
Firstly, it must not compromise anyone else in Communist hands: assuming Fox was safe, and I was sure he was, I did not anticipate any difficulty here. Secondly, it had to be plausible: this was difficult, but not impossible if they would enter into compromise; (Page 209) and if they would not it was hopeless. Thirdly, my confession would have to go far enough to support the published charges. Fourthly, it would have to fall short of earning a sentence of death or imprisonment for life.
The main difficulty would be to reconcile the third and fourth conditions; but I thought this was possible if they would co-operate in the word-twisting, at which they were such artists.
I spent many days and nights thinking all this out, and considering how far I could profitably go. Finally I had to ask my conscience whether I should go at all. I left this till last because I did not want to upset myself over moral problems until I was sure that expediency would throw them up. Now I had to face it. I was contemplating confessing to crimes that I had not committed merely in order to save my own skin.
The fact that it was unheroic did not worry me. I never thought I had the moral fibre of a martyr, and I had become painfully aware of my instinct of self-preservation in the panicky flight from Chamdo. In any case; I had nothing to be heroic about. By refusing to confess I could not save anyones life, protect any secrets, or prevent the Communists from gaining any sort of advantage anywhere. There was no compelling positive reason why I should not confess.
Nevertheless - I know this sounds 'pi,' but I cannot express it in any other way - I hated the idea of lying my way out of trouble. What made it worse was that I would have to tell lies of a specially degrading kind. It was not a matter of lying to conceal guilt, which may be sinful but is not necessarily humiliating; I would have to tell grovelling lies, accusing myself of fictious crimes, and abase myself in the way Huang was doing now. I would not only have to confess sins that I had not committed; I would also have to pretend to repent.
These qualms would have vanished if I had been lying for the benefit of some one, or for some other unselfish purpose; in fact it was just the reverse. By lying I would be letting the side down - not just my country, but the whole non-Communist world. (...)

Page 210
So I satisfied my conscience, or at least quietened it down. No doubt I rationalized, just as parents may persuade themselves that what is most convenient for themselves happens also to be best for the children, or as a voter may convince himself that, by a happy coincidence, the political party that is most likely to help him personally is also the best for the nation. But I am rationalizing again. The fact is that I subordinated ideals to expediency, and it is still on my conscience today. (...)

Chapter 18: Squeezing the Tootpaste (Page 217 - 225)
Page 219
In April I wrote what might be called the definitive version of my confession, and my photograph was taken when I signed it. It was a (Page 220) typical Communist-extracted confession, so full of self-abasement and Party jargon that anyone who knew me would have assumed from the wording that it had been drafted by some one else. Such assumptions completely misunderstood the Communist technique. A confession is never'ghosted' for a prisoner: he has to find the right words himself. (...)

Chapter 21: Freedom (Page 244 - 252)
Page 251
In spite of their betrayel by Ngapö the Khambas continued to resist for a year after the treaty was signed, until the Dalai Lama appealed personally to them to lay down their arms. And in the spring and summer of 1956 there was a definite revolt in East and North-east Tibet, in which Chinese garrisons were massacred. Had guerrillas been organized in 1950 they could have made the invasion immeasurably more difficult. The spirit of independence is still very much alive. How much longer it can last is not so clear. It has been reported that the Chinese propose to raise the population of Tibet from the present two to three million to ten million, and that can only mean large-scale Chinese colonization. Eventually the Tibetans will be outnumbered in their own land. (...)

Page 252
Tibet was backward and feudal, but nobody starved. Most of the people were poor, but there was no hunger and much happiness. Material progress was overdue, but it was beginning to come; my own employment was an example of that.

I am not a medievalist, and I think it is extremely important and beneficial that living standards should be raised. But not at that price. Nothing is worth the extinction of the greatest freedom of all, which is freedom of thought. A healthy, well-fed robot is a poor substitute for a human being.