“This was Dharmsala, on a lower rim of the Himalayas in India’s North Punjab. These children—crowded so that the small ones sleep four or live on a narrow string cot and the rest on thin straw mattresses on a stone floor, with barely enough clothing to keep warm and a diet very different from the high-protein foods of Tibet—these were the lucky ones. Those still in Tibet are being used as conscript labor by the Chinese, or have long since been snatched from their parents and taken into China on the promise of being educated, apparently in order to de-Tibetanize them, make use of their labor, and perhaps return them to Tibet years hence, after they have been fully converted by Communist training. The mass kidnaping began in 1952, after China’s forceful takeover of Tibet in 1951. Some children were heard from for a while; others, not at all. Many Tibetans at last escaped into India without knowing what had become of their children.”
—Bradford Smith, The Atlantic, June 1961
