On March 10, 1959, the Dalai Lama and his supporters started an armed rebellion in a desperate attempt to preserve Tibet's feudal serfdom and split the region from China.

On Tuesday, exactly 50 years later, the Dalai Lama claimed that Tibetans have been living in "hell on earth," as if the Tibet under the former feudal serfdom ruled by him were a heaven.

The Dalai Lama also alleged at a gathering in India's Dharamsala to mark his 50 years in exile that "these 50 years have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet."

Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama has not only been on the wrong side of history, but also has got the history upside down. Miseries of "hell on earth" and "untold suffering" occurred nowhere but in the slavery Tibet symbolized by the Dalai Lama.

Even from historical books written by Western scholars, people can draw the conclusion that Tibet under the rule of the Dalai Lama clique was a society of feudal serfdom that trampled human rights and easily reminded visitors of the dark age of medieval Europe.

The feudal serfdom had truly brought "untold suffering and destruction" to the serfs and slaves who accounted for 90 percent of the then population.

The slavery Tibet was just "hell on earth" as Carles Bell, who lived in Lhasa as a British trade representative in the 1920s, observed that the Dalai Lama's theocratic position enabled him to administer rewards and punishments as he wished. That was because he held absolute sway over both this life and the next of the serfs and coerced them with that power.

In 1959, after the failed rebellion by the Dalai Lama and his followers, the central government of China carried out the long-delayed emancipation of millions of serfs and slaves in Tibet.

Great achievements have been made in Tibet since then in various fields such as politics, economy and culture. The following are just a few examples of those achievements:

-- The central government has adopted a policy of "political unity, freedom of religious belief and separation of politics and religion" in Tibet to ensure locals' political rights and that all religious beliefs are politically equal.

-- Tibet has seen its gross domestic product soar from 174 million yuan (25.4 million U.S. dollars) in 1959 to 39.591 billion yuan (5.78 billion dollars) in 2008, with an annual growth rate of 8.9 percent.

-- Tibet's roads totaled 51,300 km in 2008, a sharp increase from the 7,300 km in 1959.

-- The average life expectancy in Tibet has increased from 35.5 years in 1959 to 67 years at present.

Anyone without prejudice will recognize the remarkable progress in Tibet.

"Tibet has achieved remarkable economic progress and undergone profound changes since 1959 when its democratic reform began," Argemiro Procopio, a professor of international relations at the University of Brasilia, said after a trip to Tibet.

Louise T. Blouin Macbain, a well-known publisher and philanthropist, said after traveling to Tibet that "what I have seen is positive and I am especially thankful to the great efforts made by China over the years in preserving Tibetan cultural independence and its monasteries."

When the Dalai Lama claimed there is "cultural genocide" in Tibet, "I don't know which Tibet is he actually describing," she said. "As for me, it's not the one that I have seen with my own eyes."

Why then such a distortion of historical facts by the so-called Nobel Peace Prize winner? Because it is only through the distortion of history could he deceive Western audiences and disguise his true intentions.

Since their exile, the Dalai Lama and his followers have never stopped pursuing activities to split Tibet from China and restore their theocratic rule despite his claims to the opposite.

But just as the rebellion by the Dalai Lama clique failed disgracefully 50 years ago, its fantasy of "Tibet Independence" is also doomed to failure, because of the firm opposition from the Chinese people, including the Tibetans in Tibet.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2009)