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SCMP Reporter

China's most senior Tibetan official has accused Hollywood of unfairly portraying him as a traitor in Seven Years in Tibet, a film he describes as largely 'fantasy'.

 Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, 88, is shown in the film as helping the People's Liberation Army's 1950 march into Tibet.

 'None of the events in the film, apart from a few trivial details, tallies with the facts,' Mr Jigme said.

 The film, based on the book by Austrian climber Heinrich Harrer, will open in Hong Kong on Thursday.

 It shows Mr Jigme collaborating with the advancing Chinese, and even blowing up an ammunition dump to render armed resistance futile.

 Mr Jigme said the film's portrayal of his actions was grossly inaccurate.

 'I had no contact with the Chinese communists beforehand. I never met them. I knew nothing about communism,' he said, but he remains convinced that the Tibetans stood no chance.

 'The Kuomintang had an eight million-strong army backed by the United States but they were defeated.

 'The whole Tibetan nation, young, old and women were less than one million.

 'We didn't have weapons or training. How could we fight? How could we win a battle?'  Mr Jigme said most of the incidents the film depicts never took place.

 For instance, the film has him sending Harrer a Tibetan robe as a gift.

 'This is sheer fantasy,' Mr Jigme said.

 'Even in my dreams I would never consider sending him a robe.'  Mr Jigme said he first met Harrer in 1948. They played mahjong a few times.

 'He never showed any special abilities.

 'His friend [Peter] Aufschneiter did some solid work building a water canal, a sewage system and a small power plant.

 'Many people knew him and were fond of him.'  Mr Jigme said he regarded with a degree of equanimity being immortalised by Hollywood as a villain.

 'I heard Chairman Mao say that anything the enemy is against, we will support,' he said.

 'Therefore, I feel happy when the enemy hurts me.'  Mr Jigme recalled what he found when dispatched by Lhasa to take charge of the front in eastern Tibet. There were 3,000 Tibetan soldiers and 10,000 militia but no food and the local people were starving.

 Then China sent about 84,000 troops to invade.

 'Many people wanted to fight because they believed the rumours spread by foreigners: that the Chinese would kill Tibetans, burn down our monasteries, steal our belongings and rape our women,' he said.

 'Some Tibetans thought that if we are going to die anyway, why don't we fight to the end?  'I told them these are just rumours. There are 400 million Chinese and if they can accept it [communist rule], why can't a million Tibetans?  'If the Communist Party is really like that, then the 400 million Chinese won't passively accept these things.

 'I decided to dismiss all the militia and to send half of them home before the Chinese arrived.'  Mr Jigme said he later went to Beijing and signed an agreement with the Communist Party designed to legitimise the entry of Chinese troops.

 He also spoke of his response to the terrible events that followed.

 In 1962, the Panchen Lama gave Mao Zedong a 70,000-word report warning that the Tibetan race was threatened by genocide, and detailing the destruction of all monasteries, mass imprisonment and starvation.

 The report was kept secret until this year, when it was published abroad.

 Mao termed it a 'poison arrow'.The Panchen Lama spent 16 years in prison and was not fully pardoned until 1988.

 'He showed me the letter before he submitted it,' Mr Jigme said.

 'I told him he should talk with the leaders . . . instead of putting things in writing.'  Mr Jigme said the Panchen Lama's investigation of the famine involved tours of Manchuria and Guangdong, but not Tibet.

 He said the Panchen Lama had misrepresented the situation.

 'Nobody died of hunger in Tibet. I heard a few died in Qinghai but I can't give you a figure.' 



Tibet elder scorns 'fantasy' film