Slavemaster Dalai Lama has his say

   Kundun: The Amazing Story of the 14th Dalai Lama
   Directed by: Martin Scorsese
   
   This film is essentially an autobiography of the Dalai Lama, spiritual
   and political leader of feudal Tibet. Predictably, it paints the Dalai
   Lama as a reformer, and the People's Liberation Army as horrible
   oppressors. Like in "Seven Years in Tibet" we see that the Dalai Lama
   had very little contact with the common people of Tibet. The film
   repeatedly shows the Tibetan Court trying to keep the Dalai Lama in
   the dark about various political matters (palace intrigue, the
   existence of Tibetan prisons and the Tibetan army). (Lest some of MIM
   Notes' readers who saw the film be confused, we deduce that the Dalai
   Lama was born into a family of the lower nobility and not into a serf
   family. We base this on comparison of dress.)
   
   If MIM was to make a film about Tibet, would base it on the lives of
   the majority of the population not on the top leader. Such a film
   would focus on the hard work and low standard of living of the serfs
   compared to the nobility. Perhaps we would focus on the former slave
   woman who became the leader of Tibet after the Dalai Lama fled. Or
   maybe we would tell the story of this former serf:
   
   "I think I was not much different from a yak or any other draft animal
   for I could not read or write a word and knew nothing at all. For
   generations my family belonged to a big serf-owner who had five
   hundred families of serfs, working both in farming and in livestock. I
   wore the same sheepskin winter and summer and it was my only garment.
   It was so old that there was no wool on it anymore nor any warmth but
   only plenty of lice. I was always hungry."(1)
   
   MIM has no reason to doubt this portrayal of the Dalai Lama's
   knowledge of what was really going on in Tibet. However, our beef has
   never been with the individual responsibility of the Dalai Lama, but
   rather with the slave society he represents. In the almost 50 years
   since the Dalai Lama took office, he has yet to denounce past serfdom
   or even say that restoring the Dalai Lama regime will not mean
   restored slavery for the Tibetan masses.
   
   In the film, when Dalai Lama flees to India, he laments the timing of
   the Chinese "invasion" because his reforms were just about to take
   place. MIM has seen no evidence that the Dalai Lama was or is aware of
   the scope of the changes that were necessary.
   
   This film was interesting to MIM in that it portrayed significant
   changes in how the Dalai Lama tells his history. The film says that
   the Dalai Lama did not approve the 1951 agreement for the "Peaceful
   Liberation of Tibet", which set forth the a slow pace of reforms by
   which the nobility would give political power to the masses.
   
   Between 1951 and 1959, there were several rebellions of the nobility.
   In 1959, 4 of the 6 kaloons (wealthy noblemen) in the kasha (Cabinet
   of Ministers) united in rebellion. The rebellion failed because the
   Tibetan people did not support it. According to the Dalai Lama at the
   time, he was kidnapped and forced into exile. As MIM Theory 8 wrote,
   this claim was suspicious because the Dalai Lama refused an offer of
   the Chinese Communist Party to return to power. Instead, the Dalai
   Lama remained in India and denounced the 1951 Agreement. This allowed
   the Chinese Communist Party to abandon the slow pace of the 1951
   Agreement and instead speed up it's reforms. In the film the story is
   changed, the Dalai Lama plays no role in the rebellions--which are
   only discussed in the context of rejected CCP requests for the Dalai
   Lama to stop the rebellions--but willingly flees to India.
   
   In the film, we see a scene were Mao says to the Dalai Lama in a
   private meeting that "religion is poison." The only evidence MIM has
   of this meeting is the Dalai Lama's word for it, but this is not an
   incorrect statement even though it is clearly put in the movie to make
   Mao look bad. Religion most definitely is a poison used to dupe the
   masses into accepting their class based societies. Even in the film,
   we see the young Dalai Lama learning the Buddhist justifications for
   suffering. Instead of blaming the nobility for their poverty, the serf
   system wanted the people to blame their ancestors. Instead of making a
   revolution and carrying out land reform, Buddhism wants the people to
   focus on their next reincarnation.
   
   Communists should and do propagandize against religion as a part of
   the old oppressive society. The sentence "religion is poison" was
   difficult for most Amerikan audiences to grasp and for that reason MIM
   carries out much more extensive educational work around this issue.
   
   On a related point, the Dalai Lama has a number of nightmares in the
   film. In one, he is standing, surrounded by the bleeding bodies of
   hundreds or thousands of dead monks. This was a dream and never
   happened. One dream, however, MIM suspects and hopes did happen. In
   this dream, a People's Liberation Army general pays a visit to the
   Dalai Lama and tells him stories about his own oppression as a peasant
   in another part of China. Telling stories like this is a useful way to
   get people to make connections to larger issues than their own
   circumstances. But for the Dalai Lama, listening to the story of a
   peasant's poverty--even one who lived a thousand miles away--is a
   nightmare that must be awoken from immediately.
   
   Note: Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews. New World Press: Peking,
   1959, p. 30.