Talk:1959 Tibetan uprising

Casualty number

The casualty number in the info box should be what Tibet exile government claims for the whole armed struggle lasted from 1956-1962. This article seems only mentions about the incident in Lhasa, which is only a small part of the action. --24.13.180.133 (talk) 02:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

In the Xinhua news article:

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2008-03-30/155315256146.shtml

"3月10日是达赖集团所谓的“西藏起义抗暴纪念日”。1959年的这一天，达赖集团在拉萨发动全面的武装叛乱，打砸抢烧，无恶不作，叛乱分子杀死西藏自治区筹备委员会委员、堪穷（四名僧官）帕巴拉·索朗降措，并将他鞭马拖尸“示众”达两公里，惨不忍睹。对达赖集团而言，3月10日本身就是一个呼唤暴力的日子。"

It was said that a Tibetan monk, who worked with the Communists as a member of the Preparatory Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, was killed and his body was dragged by a horse in front of the crowd for two kilometers. I ask someone familiar with the events to verify this, who this person is, what he did, and what happened that day on March 10th, 1959, and edit it into this wiki article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.134.197.174 (talk) 15:32, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

Almost the entire article relies on a single account by the "Office of Tibet, London", which, according to the article, is not even the view of the CTA. I question the reliablility of that source. Ideally, the article should balance the views of the CTA and the Chinese government, being the most significant points of view on the subject. Neither view is difficult to find, even on the internet. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The Office of Tibet is described in the section on the structure of the Tibetan Government in Exile: "The CTA also maintains Offices of Tibet in New Delhi, New York, Tokyo, London, Kathmandu, Geneva, Moscow, Budapest, Paris, Canberra and Washington, D.C. These Offices of Tibet are the official agencies representing His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile." They're official agencies of both the Dalai Lama and the CTA. I believe the line in the article that you are referencing was added by an editor who may have been confused by the status of the Office of Tibet. The Offices are charged with educating the (non-Tibetan) public about issues in Tibet's status and history, so it seems quite reasonable to expect that the CTA's interpretation of events that occurred before its creation would be distributed via the Office of Tibet. Really, I think that the line in the article that indicates that there may be disagreement between this account and the Dalai Lama or the CTA should be removed- it cites the front pages of the Dalai Lama and the CTA as a source, but in neither place is there any indication that they differ from the Office's account. My question would be: since the Office is an official agency of both the Dalai Lama and the CTA, and the Office is publishing an account of the 1959 events, what reason is there to believe that this account differs from what you would hear from the CTA or the Dalai Lama? The Office exists specifically to disseminate this sort of information on behalf of the Dalai Lama and the CTA. It should, however, be balanced with reports from the PRC of what happened during this period, or any international observers. I think more than NPOV, the single-sourcing is the issue. That's largely my fault- I had quick access to the Office's account, but couldn't quickly find other good chronologies on the web. This article was pitiful before the Office chronology was added, so it seemed like a good idea to get at least an outline of the events up given the numerous references to 1959 that have been made in the media in light of recent events in Tibet. What I would really like to see is a chronology from the PRC that parallels the Tibetan account- that would provide the best contrast in terms of the interpretation of these events. Do you have links to something like this? --Clay Collier (talk) 21:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

can we confirm this OOT account is the sole and official CTA view of the incident? and to remove references to it being an account of OOT but that of the CTA release via OOT? if the views is not the official stance, it should be critically reworded as being unrelated to the stance of CTA on the incident and be subjected to as questionable sources. just because OOT is part of CTA doesn't mean they only present official view, many other agency are known to carried rival views as well. one well known example is the CIA factbook which description of nations doesn't represent the official view of the USA. Akinkhoo (talk) 00:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's a source from the CTA itself: Tibet: Proving Truth From Facts. The chronology contains fewer details than the Office of Tibet account, but otherwise they seem to correspond. The only difference that I've seen is that here there's a slight difference between the casualty estimates from the Office's account and the accounts on the CTA site- 86000 vs. 87000. The accounts I've linked to are published by the CTA Department of Information and International Relations; I would call the OOT account and the DIIR account accounts from two different branches of the CTA, but as the accounts don't really differ at all, there's very little to distinguish between them. --Clay Collier (talk) 02:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I wrote "may be different" because, at least at the time, I could not find any account offered by the CTA, nor any by the Dalai Lama. To those of you who think otherwise, thank you for posting your arguments. Now, the Dalai Lama web site does not mention the CTA nor any OOT as representatives of the Dalai Lama. Clay's quote,

The CTA also maintains Offices of Tibet in New Delhi, New York, Tokyo, London, Kathmandu, Geneva, Moscow, Budapest, Paris, Canberra and Washington, D.C. These Offices of Tibet are the official agencies representing His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile.[1]

is taken from the OOT London web site; I expect something similar from the Dalai Lama or from the CTA, not the OOT itself, especially since internal disagreements have been reported by third-party, albeit not the most well known sources.[2][3] At this moment, the CTA link and reference [4] is not working, so either some one else or I will have to follow up on that. I will replace my line for the time being. If eventually you could make the claim that such and such is the CTA's account, we'll just change the relevant citations.DXDanl (talk) 06:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There was a statement on the CTA site stating that the OOT was an official representative of the Dalai Lama and the CTA; unfortunately, the entire tibet.net site seems to be down at the moment. Here's the version from the Google cache. Not sure what you mean about internal disagreements; the articles you link to refer to differences of opinion within the Tibetan exile community over current tactics, rather than indicating that 1) the OOT is not part of the government, or that 2) they have different interpretations of the 1959 uprising. This page from dalailama.com refers to the "office of the Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (also known as the Office of Tibet) in their region" regarding contacting the Dalai Lama, which does indicate that the Office of Tibet acts as a representative of the Dalai Lama. Hopefully the CTA website will resurrect itself at some point, but I don't think that there should be any question that the Office of Tibet should be regarded as part of the government, and that it's views on the uprising don't differ significantly from those of other parts of the government- at least from the OOT and CTA accounts, there's no reason to think so. I'm fine with identifying the elements from the OOT chronology as being specific to the OOT and not another body, but I don't think that the text should suggest that the OOT account differs from the rest of the government when we don't have indications that this is the case. --Clay Collier (talk) 07:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Reference 6

Should this even be in here? The video on YouTube is private.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOhDBo6x2ZY

DonSlice 17:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Verifiability

Almost the entire article is based on sources from the parties involved. The English Wikipedia policy, Verifiability, clear states that "if no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." It also states that "articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." I realize that policies are to be followed with discretion, but in this case, the violation seems much too blatant.DXDanl (talk) 06:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There's quit a bit of coverage of the uprising in "The Dragon in the Land of Snows". Tsering Shakya is a Tibetan exile, but doesn't seem to have any connection with the government in exile- his work seems to be in the capacity of a scholar, rather than activist. I had a copy of the book a week or so ago and was hoping to add some additional references, but it was recalled to the library before I had a chance. There are enough books on Tibetan history that it should be possible to add some of them as references. --Clay Collier (talk) 07:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)