Publications

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Racial Discrimination in Tibet (2000)

Discrimination in Healthcare

Forced Abortion

In 1998, a joint investigation by The International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, uncovered shocking testimonies of forced abortions carried out as late as the 7th or 8th month of pregnancy, seriously endangering the mother's life. Many of the 55 men and women interviewed had either been subject to, or witnessed these operations, as quoted below.

"They injected a needle where the baby's head was. She was in labour pain for one hour. The baby was born and cried. Then it started bleeding from the nose and died" She had the abortion because she couldn't pay the fine."

"They injected a needle in her stomach, and she gave birth. The baby was delivered and put in a bowl. The baby moved for a few minutes and then died. The baby had a hole in its head."

Tashi Dolma was a doctor of western medicine in Tsolho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province. Although she desperately wanted to keep her second baby, she and her husband were threatened with severe consequences if they didn't have an abortion. Eventually, she relented. "My child was already 84 days old, so the only way to do an abortion was through the 'changuan ringong liu chan' technique. It causes a lot of bleeding and pain. First they insert a sort of flexible rubber tube with a pointed end into the cervix. There is no medicine in this. They leave this inside for 24 hours. Because it stimulates the birth canal, which opens up slowly and gives way to the flow of blood, a lot of bleeding starts after two hours. After one day they take it out. It has become bigger inside so it is easier for the knife to get inside. They insert an instrument which has a sort of long handle with a knife at the end. They put this inside and start to move it around, cutting the foetus in pieces. Then it is very easy to extract. No words have the power to express the excruciating pain I experienced during the operation. Over 85% of the women worker have to undergo the same torture and excruciating pain of surgery like me."

Another woman reported on her observations at a hospital in Lhasa, where she claimed to have seen a special abortion and sterilisation unit for Tibetan women. She witnessed late-term abortions on women already in their 7th or 8th month of pregnancy, and she saw the dead body of a male baby she thought to be about 8th months old. The same witness also investigated two other hospitals in Lhasa - Medhepuk Sober and Dewachu hospitals. Abortions were regularly performed here on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with half-days on Thursday and Saturday.

China continues to dispute this evidence, and in 1997, Tu Den, Director of China's Family Planning Office of Tibet, was quoted in the official "China Daily" newspaper as saying that "forced abortion and sterilisation are absolutely non-existent." However, just one year later he was directly contradicted in a rare admission by a Chinese official from the Department of International Relations in the State Family Planning Committee. Cong Jun, director of the department, said in a speech to a Sino-European Seminar on Women's Issues held on 29 October 1998 that the State Family Planning Committee had issued circulars throughout the country to prohibit its branch organisations at all levels from forcing women to undergo abortion or sterilisation. She acknowledged that "there [were] some cases of forced birth control in the huge grass-roots family planning network" and added that "we will try our best to prevent more from happening [and] will keep a close eye on the protection of women's rights in this issue."

Although Chinese women are also subject to birth control policies, the restriction of the reproductive rights of Tibetan women must be viewed as discrimination against the Tibetan people. Given the low density of the Tibetan population in Tibet, there is no rational basis for controlling the timing and number of births among Tibetans, other than as part of a governmental intention to commit genocide. A number of official statistics confirm this:

The "TAR" Ninth 5-Year Plan set a target for the regional population to be kept under 2.57 million by the end of the year 2000, and official figures show that the total population of the "TAR" in 2000 is only 2.43 million.

According to official statistics, the "TAR" had a total of 50,700 births in 1998 and registered a birth rate of 20.32 per 1000, down 8.43 per 1000 from the figure in 1991. The natural population growth rate was 14.82 per 1000, or 1.482% - well below the target set for the Ninth 5-Year Plan period (1996-2000) of 16 per 1000 per year.

The net population growth in the "TAR" also dropped by over 50% from 1.82% per annum in the period 1990-1994, to a mere 0.73% in the period 1994-1998 - well under the 1.02% per annum growth for the PRC as a whole.

Thus, the intensive implementation of birth control is shown to be statistically unwarranted. The Alliance for Research in Tibet reached a similar conclusion, and found that the growth of the Tibetan population was actually in need of a boost rather than a cap:

"An especially disturbing finding is that, according to official statistics for 1990 and 1994, Tibetan population growth is much slower than in host provinces in all Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures and equals the national growth rate in only one. This strongly refutes claims that forced birth limitation is currently justified. If Chinese statistics are valid, the Tibetan population merits protection, not suppression."