Ngabo Ngawang Jigme Passes Away[Thursday, 24 December 2009, 11:04 a.m.]

In this file photo Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, (2nd R) with three Tsepons of the Tibetan government in late 1940s – Tsepon Namseling, (1st R), Tsepon Shakabpa (3rd R) and Tsepon Lhukhangwa Tsewang Rabten (4th R)

Dharamshala: Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, a senior Tibetan official who assumed various military and political responsibilities in Tibet both before and after 1959, died in Beijing on Wednesday, 23 December 2009. He was 99.Ngabo Ngawang Jigme was born in 1910 in Lhasa.Ngabo began his political career in the Tibetan government in 1936.  He was later promoted to the post of Kalon, member of the Kashag and subsequently made the provincial governor of Chamdo, Eastern Tibet’s provincial capital, during which he led the Tibetan army to counter aggression by China’s People’s Liberation Army in 1950. On 23 May 1951, a five-member Tibetan delegation headed by Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, was coerced by the government of the People’s Republic of China to sign the 17-Point Agreement. When the Tibetan delegates signed the 17-Point Agreement on 23 May 1951 without being able to inform their government, they stressed that they were signing only in their personal capacity. Even the seals affixed to the document were not those of the Tibetan government. They were made in Beijing and merely bore the personal names of the delegates.Ngabo Ngawang Jigme is survived by his wife and children.