March 28 is a festival for millions of former Tibetan serfs and their offspring to celebrate their emancipation from the hell of cruel oppression, but for the former oppressors who are still dreaming of returning to the past, the day is marked for their paradise lost, said a Tibetan scholar.

Lhagpa Phuntshogs, director-general of the China Tibetology Research Center, made the remarks after the regional legislature of Tibet endorsed a bill Monday to mark March 28 as "Serfs Emancipation Day", the date when about one million serfs and slaves in the region were freed in 1959 following an order of the State Council, or Cabinet, to dismiss the local government of Tibet and replace it with a preparatory committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

In old Tibet, the serf-owner class, who made up merely five percent of the Tibetan population, owned the entire cultivated land and grassland and the majority of the livestock, and they also controlled the freedom of serfs and slaves, who accounted for 95 percent of the total population, the Tibetan scholar said in an article published by the Guangming Daily.

The owners could sell and transfer their serfs, while serfs had to work for the owners generation by generation. Serfs had to seek their owners' consent before they got married, while their kids were also owned by their owners, according to the Tibetologist.

After the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet in 1951, Tibetans, including some from the upper class, became increasingly eager to reform the feudal serfdom. But in a hope to maintain their paradise, the reactionary part of the upper class on March 10, 1959 launched an armed rebellion, backed by international anti-China and anti-communism forces, the scholar said.

The rebellion was foiled by the People's Liberation Army and on March 17, the Dalai Lama, his family and his supporters ran away.

Between 1959 and 1961, a democratic reform was carried out in Tibet to destroy the feudalist serfdom completely.

"This was the people's revolutionary movement, in which the Party led the one million Tibetan serfs to topple the dark rule of the serf owner class," said Lhagpa Phuntshogs.

But those rebellious forces in exile have never given up their attempt to restore their paradise lost, so they mark March 10 as a day for their so-called "uprising", and on the very day, the Dalai Lama would publish an announcement every year like a "human rights guard" to curse the democratic reform , tell lies to the international community and sabotage the prosperity, stability, peace, and unity in Tibet, he said.

"But the masses of emancipated serfs and their offspring living in Tibet are clear who are the guard for the Tibetan people's fundamental interests and who are the saboteur of their happy life."

(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2009)