Village chief who fled to India is ‘villain’ of story
KESONG, TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION: Kesong, some 200 km from Arunachal Pradesh, was the first Tibetan village the People’s Liberation Army marched into on May 23, 1959, to “emancipate it from serfdom”, says the Communist Party of China narrative.
When villagers from somnolent Kesong stage a play to mark 60 years of the day in 2019, they know who will be the villain of the piece – the then village chief who had, at the first rumblings of liberation, fled to India following the furtive footsteps of the 14th Dalai Lama.
At the no-frills “Patriotism Education Centre”, a bare building which serves as a museum for Kesong’s past life as a village of “Tibetan serfs”, village chief Suokang Wangqing Geli lurks like a criminal whose game is up in a faded black and white photograph.
Wang, the local government-appointed guide, recounted the “centuries of horror” before 1959.
For years, villagers of Kesong had no land, no rights and little to eat, Wang said.
Geli and the likes before him owned much of the land. Villagers who could not pay taxes in cash or kind were tortured. A “model” torture room at the museum has the tools of torture on display.
Kesong’s tryst with socialism changed its destiny – the villagers recovered their lives and voices. Within days, the first Communist Party branch was opened.
Tibet was incorporated into China in 1951 but, according to officials accompanying HT, “democracy reforms” with Chinese characteristics in villages such as Kesong were carried out in 1959.
Nearly 60 years later, it is one of Tibet’s richer villages with a per capita income of around 17,620 yuan (nearly Rs 1.8 lakh).
As for Geli, no one knows what happened to him after he fled to India with his family. “We don’t have any details,” shrugged the guide.
The details needed – and approved -- by the Communist Party are anyway on show at the Patriotism Education Centre.