Aged twenty four when he left Tibet, he had never known a time when the Chinese had not ruled his homeland.

Slotting his account into her own knowledge of recent Tibetan history, Mary Craig gives a superb account of the Tibetan experience of mass murder and torture but the total, systematic destruction of a rich and honoured culture. Emme-La s story is also the story of Tibetan everyman - it was shared by every Tibetan who, after 1959, suffered the destruction of everything they valued and who became mere pawns in the hands of their Chinese masters.

This disturbing insight into one man s horror is also a plea never to forget the victims of one of the worst cases of genocide in recent history.