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Human Rights Update and Archives
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The year 2007 saw repression worsen in Tibet signaling the hardening attitude of China despite holding of the sixth round of talks between Envoys of the Dalai Lama and Beijing during the year. Throughout the year, the Chinese authorities in occupied Tibet unleashed spate after spate of policy campaigns, regulations and decrees to subject Tibetans to intensified state control over their human rights and fundamental freedoms. In 2007, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) meticulously monitored the developments and documented violations of human rights taking place in Tibet in every sphere of rights protected under international human rights law.
Cases of arbitrary arrest and detentions (65 known cases) increased almost threefold compared to last year, suggesting a clear indication of the human rights situation worsening in Tibet. While new regulations in placing Tibetan Buddhism under intensified state control were thrust upon the so-called “Tibet Autonomous Region” (“TAR”), Kardze region outside of the “TAR” continues to remain the most volatile Tibetan area in terms of political developments, for several successive years now. Around half of the total 65 known cases of arbitrary arrests in 2007 were recorded from Kardze region alone. The Chinese authorities routinely resorted to arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture in dealing with peaceful protests by the Tibetans, which included displaying the banned Tibetan flag, staging non-violent demonstrations, possessing pictures of the Dalai Lama, and posters calling for freedom in Tibet. There are currently 119 known Tibetan political prisoners, of which 43 are serving terms of more than ten years and 80 are monks and nuns.
The saffron revolution in Burma during 2007 gripped worldwide attention which led to the international condemnation of the ruling military junta’s bloody crackdown on the peaceful monks’ uprising. The developments in Burma which last saw popular protests of such magnitude in the late 1980s, around the same time popular uprisings also took place in Chinese-occupied Tibet, left Tibetans in awe and wishful of such a mass scale protest in Tibet although they would confront a stronger, bigger and a ruthless communist regime.
The monastic community in Tibet has for many years been in the forefront as challengers to the Chinese rule in Tibet. 70% of the total 119 known political prisoners in Tibet are monks and nuns. The authorities have long identified the monasteries and nunneries in Tibet as a “hot bed of dissent” and as a measure towards bringing the monastic community under a tight official grip, the authorities regularly conduct “patriotic re-education” and “love your country, love your religion” political campaigns in the monastic institutions. During 2007, the “patriotic education” campaign was reinvigorated in various Tibetan areas especially in Kardze region, after nomad, Ronggye A’drak’s protest in Lithang County. The testimonies provided by monks and nuns fleeing Tibet reveal the dire impact of “patriotic education” upon their lives and on the study of Tibetan Buddhism. The TCHRD reported a number of such cases in 2007.
During 2007 religious freedom in Tibet took a major setback with the introduction of two sets of regulations in subjecting Tibetan Buddhism and spiritual masters to intensified state control through legal conundrums. The regulations, “Tibet Autonomous Region Implementing Measures for the Regulations on Religious Affairs”, and “Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism”, received hostile global reactions. Instead of providing protection for religious practices, the regulations are aimed at enforcing compliance of the monastic community and other spiritual Tibetans with the government policies on monastic institutions and religious figures. The new measures on reincarnate lamas described by the Chinese official press as ‘an important move to institutionalize the management of reincarnation,’ underscores the Communist Party’s agenda to undermine and supplant the Tibetan religious hierarchy and weaken the authority of legitimate Tibetan religious leaders including the Dalai Lama. As a consequence of the new regulations and other policy directives, violation of the right to religion or belief escalated intensely in 2007. Tibetan Buddhism entered a dark phase wherein historical, lineage and traditional practices are now put into legal conundrums for the state to legitimize its control and thus destabilize the religion as a long-term mission.
The new laws clearly show that the Chinese leadership is bent on replaying the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976), during which time devastating acts were committed to eradicate Tibetan Buddhism in the name of purging “old ideas”. In much similarity to that era, during 2007 statues of religious importance, especially those of Guru Rinpoche, were destroyed in Samye Monastery, in Ngari Darchen in Purang County and in Rongpatsa Village in Kardze County, citing incompliance with the new religious affairs law. In a parallel development, a religious decree was issued in September 2007 demanding the reincarnate lamas seek permission from the authorities to be reborn. This proves that the Chinese leadership’s mentality does not show an iota of change in its frenzy to wipe out Buddhism in Tibet amidst all the modernization, glamour and scientific progress taking place elsewhere in the People’s Republic of China. In introducing these regulations, the leadership has struck at the heart of Tibetan identity and cultural heritage, which is heavily influenced by Buddhism.
The TCHRD views these new regulations as domestic legal stepping-stones to transform Tibet into an atheist region where the so-called “communist spiritual civilization” will prevail. There is now no doubt that the current attack on Tibetan Buddhism is another indication of the escalating nature of cultural genocide taking place in Tibet. While China voted in favour when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007, in Tibet, Beijing has been implementing various policies, the new religious laws being the latest evidence, to wipe out Tibetan Buddhism from the land of snows.
There are strong restrictions placed on religious ceremonies in Tibet. During important days of religious significance like Saka Dawa, Gaden Ngamchoe, the birthdays of the Dalai Lama and the 11th Panchen Lama, official prohibitions with stern warnings are issued. In one instance the Lhasa City Committee members prohibited children from participating in religious activities at schools during the Buddhist holy month of Saka Dawa. The children were specifically ordered to refrain from visiting monasteries and wearing sacred amulet threads or else to face expulsion from school. In another instance, official orders were placed banning prayer ceremonies during the birth anniversary of the Dalai Lama and also prayer ceremonies coinciding with a grand prayer ceremony for the Dalai Lama being conducted in India. Defying orders, Tibetans from all walks of life held a grand celebration of incense burning on 19 June 2007 to mark the birth anniversary of the Dalai Lama as per the Tibetan lunar calendar, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth Tibetan month.
Despite China’s continued defamation campaign against the Dalai Lama and the heightened security measures and control, joyous Tibetans inside Tibet as a mark of celebration of the US Congressional Gold Medal Award to the Dalai Lama on 17 October 2007, held incense burning ceremonies, hoisting prayer flags, bursting fire crackers and giving fresh paint to monasteries. At least eight Tibetans are known to have been arrested in incidents related with the celebrations of the Dalai Lama being granted the US Congressional Gold Medal. In Drepung Monastery, heavily armed troops in truckloads (reportedly around 3000 armed police) were deployed and the monastery sealed off for visiting pilgrims, whilst the monks inside the monastery were banned from going outside. The monks had earlier given fresh white wash to the exterior of a hall assigned as the residence of the Dalai Lama as a mark of their joy over the US medal.
In February 2007, Zhang Qingli, a strong ally of President Hu Jintao, was officially appointed as the Communist Party Secretary in the “TAR”. He left no doubt about what to expect under his leadership when he publicly stated that the Communist Party is the ‘real Buddha’ for Tibetans, having earlier told senior party officials in the region that they were engaged in a “fight to the death” against the Dalai Lama. To observers and analysts, such statements highlight some of the major problems surrounding the Chinese leadership in the Sino-Tibet issue: arrogance, thrusting of official stance, stifling in religious matters, unrealistic, and impractical steps to curb dissidence.
While the patriotic education campaign and Dalai Lama vilification campaigns were stepped up in Tibet under Zhang’s leadership, political leaders of Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States of America met with the Dalai Lama. The meeting with the German Chancellor particularly grabbed world-wide media attention when high level meetings and trade delegations were canceled by China as “punishment” for meeting the Dalai Lama. The German Chancellor showed immense moral integrity and strength, in maintaining her government’s position of human rights concerns as a top priority, despite heavy criticism and pressure. In the contemporary world where commercial interest heavily overrides human rights concerns, for instance in North Korea, Burma, China, Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Belarus, Sudan and Zimbabwe etc, the German Chancellor’s meeting with the Dalai Lama and subsequent maintenance of position, provides a remarkably exemplary approach for states that are willing and courageous enough to improve human rights conditions in the world at large and Tibet in particular.
There are virtually no civil and political rights in Tibet and under such circumstances strong reactions by international leaders give hope and aspirations to the Tibetans who remain completely deprived of their freedom and human rights. Freedom of expression and opinion are severely curtailed in Tibet. The authorities exert self-censorship as a primary mechanism of control over the media and publications. All information dissemination has to mandatorily conform to the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department guidelines. After successful jamming of radio stations, the authorities have now shifted their focus to blogs, websites and video-sharing sites, in order to control the flow of information.
Several Tibetan sites were ordered to be shut down for noncompliance with official guidelines. Tibetans in Tibet have increasingly started to use the internet to seek information or to vent their frustrations over the authorities in cyber space. On 16 October 2007, a day ahead of the US Congressional Gold Medal Award to the Dalai Lama, popular internet blogs www.tibettl.com/blog and www.tibetcm.com/blog were closed down. Another Tibetan language site “China’s Tibetan Residential Education Network” was also closed down around July 2007 for reasons unknown. On the other hand, foreign journalists visiting Tibet were also placed under restrictions, and harassed. Two journalists, Herald Maass, China correspondent of the German daily ‘Franfurter Rundschau’, and Tim Johnson, the China correspondent of ‘McClatchy’, were summoned separately for questioning on May 15 by Zhang Lizhong, a division director at the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department, regarding their trip to Tibet in April 2007. The duo were accused of mistaken, false and unacceptable reporting. The authorities closed down the travel agency in Lhasa responsible for facilitating the duo’s tour in Tibet.
2007 saw a massive form of persecution in the traditional Eastern Tibet region following the protests in Lithang County in August 2007 by a Tibetan nomad and the subsequent crackdown on several identified Tibetans and others who were presumed involved. For the simple expression of his opinion in calling for the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet and raising concern over the disappeared Panchen Lama and raising other slogans, the Tibetan nomad, Ronggye A’drak, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment by the Kardze Intermediate People’s Court on 20 November 2007. In a stark irony, two other Tibetans, Adruk Lopoe and Kunkhen, were sentenced to harsher terms by the same court, ten and nine years prison terms respectively. They were sentenced on charges of “colluding with foreign separatist forces to split the country” by sending “state secrets” to the outside world for the alleged crime of reporting information and pictures of unrest in the area. As a clear indication of the high prevalence of arbitrary and politically motivated execution of China’s due process of law, the Court sentenced Ronggye A’drak and the others within a record three and half months.
Prior to the sentencing, authorities warned the Tibetans during their solidarity movement in support of A’drak, both verbally and also by written directives, that anyone caught speaking about the political incident in the area to the outside world would be liable to face jail terms of between three to ten years. The swift implementation of such threats was evident when the court sentenced Lopoe and Kunkhen to lengthy prison terms for the alleged crime of reporting incidents in Lithang to the outside world under the charges of leaking “state secrets” and catch-all “subversion to the state”. This development reveals the farce nature of the judiciary system of China. When it comes to Tibetans, there is zero tolerance for anyone targeted as challenging the State. The lack of independent judges and due process is seen normal, the denial of the right to defense of choice is the nature since the legal process only is to protect the Communist Party of China. Under such circumstances, the culture of impunity will reign without scrutiny.
Prior to the protest in Lithang, ‘anti-terrorist’ units of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) held drill exercises in the Tibetan region in Gansu Province, Kanlho, in the first week of July 2007. Although the officials claimed that the exercise was carried out to counter terrorist plot to disrupt or sabotage the Olympic games in 2008, but there are strong indications that the exercise was aimed at protesting crowds and to threaten Tibetans with force. Such military drills were repeated in other Tibetan areas in Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces sending a clear signal of intimidation to any Tibetans engaging in political activities.
China routinely charges peaceful Tibetan political activists and human rights defenders under the legislation “endangering state security”. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people charged under the act. With vague and wide-ranging definitions for terms like “state secret” and “endangering state security”, it is of high concern that the authorities use the act as a sweeping yardstick to eliminate all individuals engaging in political activism or those deemed as political activists suspects or human rights defenders in Tibet.
In their dealing with political activism, the Chinese authorities in Tibet do not make any exceptions for women, children, the handicapped or the elderly. This was clearly proven on 7 September 2007 when police detained about 40 students alleged to have scribbled graffiti calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and for a free Tibet on the walls of the village police station and other places in the village. Out of the 40 detained, seven students, all from nomadic families and students of Amchok Bora Village Secondary School, in Labrang County (Ch: Xiahe xian), Gannan/Kanlho “TAP” in Gansu Province were kept under continued detention after releasing the rest. Four of the students were reportedly tortured.
In another instance on 20 November 2007, three teenage monks of Pekar Choekorling Monastery in Driru County were brutally beaten by police following a scuffle between the monks and Chinese shopkeepers. One of the monks, Tsering Gyaltsen, was beaten particularly severely after police found him wearing a photo of the Dalai Lama around his neck. China is a State Party to the UN Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In both these conventions, torture has been absolutely prohibited under any circumstances but in reality it occurs unabated in Tibet with impunity. The Chinese authorities ensure that torture continues to be deeply rooted in the detention centres and prisons in Chinese-occupied Tibet as the official tool to kill human dignity.
On 18 October 2007, the Nangpa Pass shooting incident in September 2006, which resulted in the death of a nun, was revisited. This year the target was a group of 46 fleeing Tibetans, nine people were left missing and three arrested. Each year Tibetans flee from Tibet through the Nangpa Pass due to various reasons such as seeking education in exile, pursuing Buddhist studies, political reasons and audience with the Dalai Lama. The fleeing Tibetans knowingly undertake the treacherous journey across the Himalayas to flee from persecution in Tibet. Although a good majority safely crosses the Himalayas into Nepal, many of them perish en route either due to shooting by Chinese border security forces, falling into crevasses, of hunger or by getting lost in the mountain ranges.
Despite worldwide awareness and condemnation over the Nangpa Pass shooting incident last year, the perpetrators of the crime go unaccounted for except for reportedly one early retirement of a top Chinese general, Gen Meng Jinxi. While the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial and Summary Killings called upon China to make public the findings of the shooting incident last year, the Chinese authorities have so far ignored this request.
In 2007, 2,338 Tibetans managed to safely reach the Tibetan Refugee Reception Centre in Dharamsala, North India, the seat of the Dalai Lama and the headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration. As per the usual pattern, minors below 18 years of age once again accounted for around half the total number of refugees this year. With poor education facilities in the rural areas of Tibet where about 75% of the Tibetan population reside, coupled with biased curriculum where schools do exist, and in order to prevent brainwashing of children through the various sinicization designs of China, parents risk sending their children into exile in order to receive broad based modern education, whilst preserving their Tibetan identity and religious and cultural heritage.
Livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans in rural areas was tremendously affected under the government’s relocation of Tibetan herders and the compulsory “comfortable housing program” which orders rural villages to pull down old houses, mostly along the main roads, and compulsorily build new houses designed by the authorities largely at their own expense and without their consent. The programs of these forced evictions were launched as to produce showcase “socialist villages” to the expected influx of tourists during the Olympics in Beijing. However, it has resulted in disastrous impacts on the lives of those Tibetans affected but China refuses to address the consequences.
The marginalization of Tibetans in Tibet is deteriorating each year. Chinese settlers in hundreds and thousands after taking over urban Tibetan areas are rapidly spreading in some rural areas in Tibet as well. The Qinghai-Lhasa railway line which became operational since July 2006 is greatly accelerating the Chinese population transfer into Tibet. With 1.5 million passengers riding the high-tech train in the first anniversary according to the official media, it is disturbingly evident by the sheer number as to the influx of settlers along with tourists. According to Lhasa City household data collected by the Public Security Bureau, there were 250 thousand households in Lhasa prior to May 2006. Within a year, due to the Qinghai-Lhasa train there has been a startling increase in the number of households. It has now become 350 thousand households comprising of 150 thousand Tibetan households while the remaining 200 thousand those of Chinese. About half the Chinese households in Lhasa have originally come from the Chinese areas in neighbouring Sichuan Province.
With increasing number of Chinese settlers into Tibet, the Tibetan areas are rapidly transforming into Chinese towns. Fisheries, slaughterhouses, poultry farms, brothels disguised as beauty saloons or massage parlours, selling live insects on the market, etc which have never been a part of the Tibetan culture are increasingly finding their prominence in Tibetan areas. Younger generation Tibetans prefer to communicate in mandarin Chinese rather than in their native tongue to find place in a market economy and education system formatted to function predominantly in Chinese language. This proves the urgency of cultural genocide taking place on the Tibetan plateau. If the current trend continues in Tibet then in 15 years time Tibet will cease to exist as the Dalai Lama cautioned during a visit to Australia in June 2007.
In August 2008 the show begins in China. Beijing is all ready to stage the summer Olympics with much pomp, glamour and propaganda. The year is also designated by many as the year of opportunity for scrutiny of China for its human rights record. With consistent failure on human rights in Tibet, East Turkestan (Ch: Xinjiang) and Inner Mongolia, and other wide ranging human rights struggles of the Chinese in mainland and for China’s political support to ruthless regimes like Sudan, North Korea, Burma and others, the year is indeed opportune to build up pressure and expose China’s human rights farce to the whole world. TCHRD calls for One World, One Dream…let there be Human Rights in Tibet. Let there be dignity and justice for all in present-day China.
[ top]TCHRD ACTIVITIES BULLETIN
TCHRD releases Annual Report 2007: Human Rights Situation in Tibet
On 21 December 2007, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) held a press conference at Lhakpa Tsering Hall, Department of Information and International Relation (DIIR), on release of its 2007 Annual Report: Human Rights Situation in Tibet. The Centre’s Executive Director briefed the Tibetan media about the human rights situation in Tibet which was followed by questions from the media.
[ top]FOSS Workshop in Dharamsala
Mr. Tenzin Norgay, UN Affairs Personnel and Mr. Tashi Phuntsok, Information Officer, attended the four-day workshop on the implementation of ‘Free and Open Source Software’ (FOSS) from 22-25 January 2008 in Ganchen Kyishong Dharamsala. The workshop was organised by Mahiti, a Bangalore-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) and co-hosted by Tibetan Computer Resource Centre.
More than 30 participants from various departments of the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibetan NGOs and Indian NGOs from Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir attended the four day long FOSS training. The participants were taught about basics of browser, window security, visual tools, software equivalent to page maker such as scribe, ink scape, CMS-Plone, audio visual tools, audio editing tools, video editing tools, music composing tools, basic concepts of FOSS, fire-fox extension for web developers.
[ top]CSPT pay visit to Centre
Ms. Jude Caris Namgyal, a project co-ordinator of the France based NGO, Comite de soutien au people Tibetain (CSPT) paid a visit to the Centre between 12 January - 7 February 2008 and interacted with beneficiaries of the organisation’s project for former political prisoners. She looked into the specific needs of former political prisoners such as household and medical facilities along with Centre’s Executive Director during her stay.
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