Forum extols benefits of Xizang's democratic reform

Any attempt to romanticize pre-liberation Xizang, with its oppressive feudal serfdom, as a Shangri-La blatantly disregards the plight of its suffering serfs and deliberately tramples on the notion of human rights, experts said at a forum in Beijing on Thursday.

To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Xizang's democratic reform in 1959, which liberated over 1 million people from serfdom and slavery, a forum was jointly held by the China Tibetology Research Center, the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, and the China Society for Human Rights Studies.

Before democratic reform, 95 percent of Xizang's population were serfs and slaves. They had no freedom or rights and were considered the private property of their masters, often being referred to as "talking livestock".