Anytime “China” and “Tibet” are mentioned in the same sentence, it’s rarely a heartwarming story — Perhaps to Westerners. But some officials of China’s ruling Communist Party would beg to differ.
An eulogy for Ren Rong, who briefly served as party secretary for the autonomous Tibet region in the early 70s, noted him as a beacon of “determination and…glorious deeds.” Somebody the “masses of all nationalities in Tibet can never forget.”
Sophie Richardson, China Editor for Human Rights Watch News, believes Tibetans will remember him for entirely different reasons.
She penned another depiction of him in an article for the rights group’s website.
Richardson notes that Rong rose to power under Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, one of the most brutal periods of Communist rule in China. He later helped oversee the extension of martial law in 1970, following the violent suppression of the 1969 uprisings throughout the Tibet autonomous region. He later became Party Secretary of the region in 1971.
She writes, “Yet Rong’s and others’ rule was so heavy-handed it prompted a rare public apology by the party’s general secretary, Hu Yaobang, during a 1980 visit to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.”
