September 9, 2025 marks 60 years since China formally established the so-called “Tibet Autonomous Region” (TAR), which covers only about half of Tibet. Chinese state media celebrates, but Tibetans have little to rejoice about.

The Lost Tibetan Guge Kingdom was no ordinary polity. It was a spiritual citadel, a cradle of renaissance, and a forgotten bridge between Tibet, India, and the sacred heart of the Himalayas. Towering from the windswept cliffs of western Tibet, Guge once served Gang Rinpoche (Mount Kailash) not merely as a neighbor, but as its steward and protector.

Thirty-five years ago, on June 4, 1989, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square became the site of a state-sanctioned massacre. What began as a peaceful student-led movement calling for democracy, transparency, and basic freedoms ended in bloodshed under the treads of Chinese tanks and the gunfire of the People’s Liberation Army.

On May 17, 1995, the Chinese government abducted a six-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, just three days after His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama officially recognized him as the 11th Panchen Lama—the second-highest spiritual authority in Tibetan Buddhism. Since that day, he has not been seen in public. Tomorrow marks 30 years of his disappearance, and still, the world waits for answers.

If China truly "liberated" Tibetans, one must ask why so many chose to flee into exile rather than embrace their so-called freedom. In 1959, following the suppression of the Lhasa Uprising, the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of Tibetans escaped to India, fearing persecution. This was not the action of a people freed from oppression, but of a nation resisting foreign domination.