Tibet sets "Serfs Emancipation Day"

In the museum there are about a score of black-and-white photos to show the brutality of landowners: slaves' eyes gouged out, fingers chopped off, noses cut and the tendons of their feet removed.

In the late 1940s, when the Dalai Lama was to celebrate his birthday, the Tibetan local government issued an order that people should prepare human skulls, blood, skin and guts for the religious ceremony.

In Gyangze, Xigaze, the aristocratic Parlha Manor has been preserved. There, Migmar Dondrup, now 75, served for 11 years as a nangsan.

Squeezed into a dark, 7 sq m adobe house with his wife and daughter, Migmar was once so starved that he stole some 10 kg of barley.

"The landlord got angry after hearing that and had two men whip me in turn," recalled the old man. His legs were tied together and he was struck more than 100 times on the hips.

"I couldn't sit. While in bed, I could only lie on my side," he said. It took more than 20 days for the wounds to heal.

He was lucky compared with one of his relatives, a groom, who was beaten to death because the landlord believed he wasted fodder when feeding the horses.

But the 14th Dalai Lama seemed to have been "ignorant" of these kinds of events.

On March 10, 1983, he said in India: "In the past, we Tibetans lived in peace and contentment under the Buddhist light shinning over our snow land." He also said: "Our serf system is different from any other serf system, because Tibet is sparsely populated, and Buddhism, which is for the happiness and benefit of the people, advises people to love each other."