China’s socialist land reforms and military crackdown (1959)

1959 China’s socialist land reforms and military crackdown on rebels in Kham and Amdo led to the Tibetan uprising for an independent Tibet on March, 10, starting in Lhasa. In 1960 the International Commission of Jurists gave a report where the Chinese were accused of the crime of Ethnic Genocide (nine years full occupation, massacres, tortures, killings – estimated death-toll 1.2 – 1.5 million -, bombardment of monasteries extermination of nomad camps, cultural destruction – among them 6250 monasteries- etc., violating 16 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Appraisals about the number of victims and the cultural destructions do not originate from 1960, but from the times of the "Cultural Revolution" between 1966 and 1976). Thus, the Diamond Way was completely destroyed in Tibet and its 1000 years of history ended.

Many Tibetans escaped out of Tibet mainly to Bhutan, Nepal and India, among them the 16th Karmapa (to Bhutan; March 13 – April 2) and the Dalai Lama (to India; March 17 - 30). Not long after his arrival in India, the 14th Dalai Lama set up a Tibetan government-in-exile in McLeod Ganji, later in Dharamsala (name since 2022: “Central Tibetan Administration”).