Tibet Indpendence was not a farce, it was real

Baltis

In an Opinion article published by Xinhua, The Chinese Communist Party refute the declaration of Independence by the 13th Dalai Lama. 
Beijing conveniently forgets another crucial document, the Treaty between Tibet and Mongolia signed at Urga in Mongolia in January 1913.
I post here the first articles: 

Whereas Mongolia and Tibet, having freed themselves from the Manchu dynasty and separated themselves from China, have become independent States, and whereas the two States have always professed one and the same religion, and to the end that their ancient mutual friendships may be strengthened: on the part of the Government of the Sovereign of the Mongolian people Nikta Biliktu Da Lama Rabdan, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs and Assistant Minister-General and Manlai Caatyr Bei Tzu Damdinsurun; on the part of the Dalai Lama, Ruler of Tibet - Gujir Tsanshib Kanchen Lubsan Agwan, Donir, Agwan Choinzin Tschichamtso, manager of the bank, and Gendun-Galsan, secretary, have agreed on the following:

ARTICLE I The Dalai Lama, Sovereign of Tibet, approves of and acknowledges the formation of an independent Mongolian State, and die proclamation on rise 9th day of the 11th month of the year of the Pig, of the master of the Yellow Faith Jetsun Dampa Lama as the Sovereign of the land.

ARTICLE 2 The Sovereign of the Mongolian people Jetsun Dampa Lama approves and acknowledges the formation of an independent State and the proclamation of the Dalai Lama as Sovereign of Tibet.

ARTICLE 3 Both States shall take measures, after mutual consideration, for the prosperity of the Buddhist faith.

ARTICLE 4 Both States, the Mongolian and the Tibetan, shall henceforth, for all time, afford each other aid against dangers from without and from within.

Click to read the entire Treaty... 

The Chinese propaganda also forgets to mention that the Tibetan Empire once upon a time extended to Baltistan and Gilgit and Central Asia. This article by Salman Rashid in the The Express Tribune (on September 26, 2011) is telling:

Tibetans in Baltistan
Until the beginning of the 8th century CE, Baltistan was a country inhabited by the Indo-European Shin tribe. This was a time when the superpowers of the region were China and Tibet, both vying for supremacy in High Asia. Only shortly before, the Chinese had ousted the Tibetans from what is now the Chinese province of Xinjiang. But then the T’ang Dynasty was briefly interrupted by the New Zhou Dynasty (690-705) and Chinese imperial aspirations were laid low for the time being.
Emboldened by the situation, the Tibetans began to expand westward. They annexed Ladakh and following the Sindhu River reached Baltistan. For the next five decades this country remained under their firm control. Intermarriages between the new comers and the original tribes were common to such an extent in the next fifty years that there arose a race of a fine mix of Aryan and Tibetan blood — the current people of Baltistan. It was for this reason that an anthropologist of the mid-twentieth century called Baltistan ‘a living anthropological museum’.
The original Shina, the language of the Shins that sounds so very like Kashmiri and Punjabi, was almost completely swamped out of existence by Tibetan. Modern Balti, spoken over most of Baltistan, is therefore an archaic form of Tibetan. Shina continues to hold out in pockets across the country, however.
Aside: until some years ago Balti was under threat. Then one proud Balti — and he has my deepest gratitude — Hussain Singghe, worked very hard to revive the old Tibetan script. It is now coming back into vogue and signs in the streets of Skardu and Khaplu are frequently written in the old script.
Not content with holding Baltistan alone, the Tibetans expanded westward. They took Gilgit and advancing along the Ghizer River, went up the Yasin valley. The head of this valley, north of the little village of Darkot, is blocked by a huge mass of snowy mountains. In their midst there hangs a glacier among several others which can be traversed due north to reach what we now know as Upper Chitral.
The icy grip of the Darkot Glacier gives way in the north to an area that suddenly reminds one of the title Bam-e-Dunya — Roof of the World — that the high Pamirs are known by. Here on the fringe of the Pamirs, the landscape consists of rolling downs, lakes and peaks which, after the jagged towering crags of the Yasin valley, seem deceptively low giving one the impression of being on the roof. The rock wall to the north is cleaved by a saddle that has for a very long time been known as the Broghal Pass.
It was to this country that the Tibetans came by way of Yasin and Darkot. Then across the 3,800-metres-high saddle of Broghal, they reached Wakhan, the home of Tajik and Kirghiz herdsmen. Here in the bleak and wind-scoured landscape where the Oxus River is but a piddling stream, the Tibetans established a large garrison to stake out their claim to the land.

To continue reading the article...

The present exercise by Xinhua is probably mainly to deny the existence of a delineated border between India and Tibet (i.e. the McMahon Line).
Whether Beijing likes it or not, the McMahon line is a historical which Zhou Enlai himself was ready to accept in the 1950's.

Opinion: Tibet's "independence day" just a farce
English.news.cn
February 11, 2013
BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- As Tibetans in China bask in festivity to celebrate the "Water Snake Losar", or the Tibetan New Year's Day, some separatists are inciting commemorations of Tibet's so-called "100th Independence Day".
Propaganda for the planned Feb. 13 commemorations have appeared on websites of Students for a Free Tibet, a New York-based organization of exiled Tibetans advocating "Tibet's independence", "Tibetan Youth Congress" as well as popular social networking sites such as Facebook.
Such fanfare is just a farce in the present tense, and a slap in the face in retrospect of foreign aggression to China's modern history -- including that of Tibet.
"Solid" evidence the "Tibet independence" advocates cited was the so-called "Tibetan Proclamation of Independence", which they claimed to have been issued by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1913.
As a matter of fact, the document unveiled by Students for a Free Tibet last May was sheer fabrication, way apart from the original document, which was an internal speech on Buddhism and published in the form of a letter in 1932.
Re-creation of the "independence proclamation" was just a copycat of Dutchman Michael Walt van Praag's misconception in his 1987 publication, "The Status of Tibet".
In this book, van Praag said Tibet gained independence in 1913, marked by the 13th Dalai Lama's signing of the document.
The Dutchman attributed this piece of information to Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa, a former aristocrat and official of Old Tibet who published "Tibet, A Political History" in English in 1967.
In this book, Shakabpa, who was for Tibet's independence, said the 13th Dalai Lama described Tibet as a "small, religious and independent nation" in a 1913 declaration of Buddhism.
But researchers on modern history and Tibetan studies claim the exact word the Dalai Lama used in this all-Tibetan declaration was "region" (bodljongs in Tibetan) instead of "nation" or "country" which translated into "rgylkhab" in Tibetan.
Historical facts over the past centuries provide evidence against the "Tibet independence" myth.
Tibet came under the direct rule of the Chinese central government during the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century. In 1288, the Yuan regime formalized a ministry-level agency to administer the entire Tibetan region.
During the Qing Dynasty, all the Dalai Lama reincarnations required approval from Beijing.
After the Republic of China was founded in 1911, it reaffirmed the central government's authority over Tibet in the republic's first constitution.
Tibet elected 20 delegates to the national congress in 1913.
The 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen Lama both sent representatives to the national leadership conference of the Republic of China in 1931.
In 1940, the national government set up its Lhasa branch of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission.
The "Tibet independence" myth was just a fantasy that evolved during the late 19th century as a product of imperialist invasion -- particularly by the British invaders.
In 1888 and 1904 British troops invaded Tibet twice and were resisted by local Tibetan people.
At least four times during the Kuomintang's rule, the British offered military supplies to Tibet's local government to instigate uprisings.
Representatives of Great Britain and China met in 1913-1914 to negotiate a treaty marking out the boundary lines between India and its northern neighbors.
But the Chinese government never recognized the Simla Convention, which attempted to grant China secular control over "Inner Tibet," while recognizing the autonomy of "Outer Tibet" under the Dalai Lama's rule.
Behind the back of the Chinese delegates, the British created the notorious "McMahon Line" in an under-the-table deal with Tibetan representative Xazha, which the Chinese government never accepted.
According to the deal, Tibet was to cede 90,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory to Britain in exchange for further British pressure on China to seek Tibet's independence.
The "McMahon Line" was never accepted by the Chinese government. But foreign intervention continued until after Tibet's liberation in 1951.
Looking back on history, it's easy to see what the "Tibet independence" myth is all about and who is behind the fantasy.
It is therefore ridiculous for the overseas separatist forces to play up the farce and expect applause from the audience.