In 1959, China's socialist land reforms and military crackdown on rebels in Kham and Amdo led to the "1959 Tibetan uprising." In an operation launched in the wake of the National Uprising of 10 March 1959 in Lhasa, 10,000 to 15,000 Tibetans were killed within three days.[21] Resistance spread throughout Tibet. Fearing capture of the Dalai Lama, unarmed Tibetans surrounded his residence, at which point the Dalai Lama fled[22] with the help of the CIA to India.[23] On 28 March,[24] the Chinese set the Panchen Lama (who was virtually their prisoner[25]) as a figurehead in Lhasa, claiming that he headed the legitimate Government of Tibet in the absence of the Dalai Lama, the traditional ruler of Tibet.[26]
After this, resistance forces operated from Nepal. Operations continued from the semi-independent Kingdom of Mustang with a force of 2000 rebels; many of them trained at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, USA[27] Guerrilla warfare continued in other parts of the country for several years.
In 1969, on the eve of Kissinger's overtures to China, American support was withdrawn and the Nepalese government dismantled the operation.
Mao's Great Leap Forward (1959–1962) led to famine in Tibet. "In many parts of Tibet people have starved to death.. . . In some places, whole families have perished and the death rate is very high. This is very abnormal, horrible and grave," according to a confidential report by the Panchen Lama sent to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1962.[28] "In the past Tibet lived in a dark barbaric feudalism but there was never such a shortage of food, especially after Buddhism had spread....In Tibet from 1959 to 1961, for two years almost all animal husbandry and farming stopped. The nomads have no grain to eat and the farmers have no meat, butter or salt," the report continued.[28] Panchen Lama makes it clear that these deaths were a result of official policies, not of any natural disasters, as Mao was claiming to his foreign visitors, a claim still accepted by some western sinologists.[29] Panchen Lama also states the uniqueness of the famine that Tibet suffered from, "There was never such an event in the history of Tibet. People could not even imagine such horrible starvation in their dreams. In some areas if one person catches a cold, then it spreads to hundreds and large numbers simply die."[29] The destruction of most of Tibet's more than 6,000 monasteries happened between 1959 and 1961.[30] Of the 6,259 monasteries in Tibet before the Chinese occupation, only eight remained in 1976.[31]
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Reprisals for the 1959 Tibetan uprising involved the killing of 87,000 Tibetans by the Chinese count, according to a Radio Lhasa broadcast of 1 October 1960, although Tibetan exiles claim that 430,000 died during the Uprising and the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare, which continued until the US withdrew support.[57]
In spite of claims by the Chinese that most of the damage to Tibet's institutions occurred subsequently during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), it is well established that the destruction of most of Tibet's more than 6,000 monasteries happened between 1959 and 1961.[30] During the mid-1960s, the monastic estates were broken up and secular education introduced. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards, which included Tibetan members,[58] inflicted a campaign of organized vandalism against cultural sites in the entire PRC, including Buddhist sites in Tibet.[59] According to at least one Chinese source, only a handful of the most important monasteries remained without major damage.[60]