Tibet Witness Increased Tensions and Repression in 2011: Annual Human Rights Report/ENG

2012. január 23./CTA/TibetPress

DHARAMSHALA: In their annual human rights reports, leading human rights groups said the human rights situation in Tibet deteriorated as the Chinese government increased its repressive policies towards the Tibetan people’s political, religious, and cultural rights.

“The Chinese government maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability”,” the Human Rights Watch said in its 676-page World Report 2012, released 22 January.

“It rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilise and impose “Western values” on the country,” the report said.

The report said the situation throughout Tibet remained tense in 2011 following the massive crackdown on popular protests that swept the plateau in 2008. “Chinese security forces maintain a heavy presence and the authorities continue to tightly restrict access and travel to Tibetan areas, particularly for journalists and foreign visitors,” it noted.

The government continues to build a “new socialist countryside” by relocating and rehousing up to 80 percent of the TAR population, including all pastoralist and nomads.

Meanwhile, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) based in Dharamsala today released its 108-page “Human Rights Situation in Tibet: Annual Report 2011”. The report documented China’s repressive policies on civil and political liberties, right to education, religious freedom, and environment in Tibet.

Briefing the media on the situation inside Tibet, TCHRD’s executive director Tsering Tsomo and asstistant director and researcher, Jampa Monlam, said the year 2011 witnessed increasing tensions in Tibet.

“The human rights situation inside Tibet has been deteriorating since the March 2008 uprising,” the report said.

“Religious education is heavily proscribed in Tibet. Monks and nuns are unable to travel, making it difficult to seek education in Buddhist concepts not available at their home monasteries. All but three monasteries have thus far undergone the strict patriotic reeducation program, which forces monks the nuns to denounce the Dalai Lama and imposes ideological strictures on Tibetan Buddhism,” it said.

“The educational atmosphere fostered by the government stifles critical thinking, innovation, and opportunities for learning. It closely monitors activities in schools and universities, increasingly limits the availability of the Tibetan language as medium of education. Chinese is already being introduced in rural preschools in an attempt to relegate the Tibetan language to a mere subject. A culture is one step closer to extinction if its language is rendered irrelevant,” the report noted.

On China’s plan to pour billions of dollars for development in Tibet, the report said: “The result is that while economic indicators in Tibet sometimes look good, the benefits largely accrue to Chinese migrants and Chinese companies – not the Tibetans, who are being increasingly marginalised in their own land.”

The report described the forcible relocation of Tibetan nomads as a trick and said it ignores the fact that for many millenia, nomads have been an integral part of the natural environment.  “It ignores the decades of failed policies that have damaged the natural environment. For the Chinese government to find a real answer to environmental problems on the Tibetan plateau, it needs to embrace the knowledge and experience of Tibetan nomads instead of eliminating it,” it said.

“The only chance that Tibetans have to voice their concerns is often through public protest. But the Chinese government does all it can to intimidate and harass Tibetans into not voicing their concerns. Because authorities consider these protests to be political in nature, it is not uncommon for them to be beaten, arrested, and even shot at,” the report said.

“A total of twelve Tibetans have set fire to themselves within a span of nine months in 2011. The self-immolations are symptomatic of the greater plight that Tibetans find themselves in throughout the Tibetan plateau,” it said.

“Freedom of expression, access to justice and many other basic rights are denied to the Tibetan people,” it asserted.

The report noted that while China refuses to admit any responsibility for the self-immolations, it has instead increased oppression in Tibet, continuing to violate it’s international human rights obligation.

Speaking on the heavy restrictions imposed on media and freedom of speech in China, the report said China liberally uses the claim of ‘state secrets’ to violate the rights of individuals and to curb press and academic freedom.

“Foreign journalists are frequently denied access to sensitive places while most of the domestic journalists are mere mouthpieces of the government,” they said.