Racial Discrimination in Tibet (2000)
Discrimination in Housing
Arbitrary Searches and Intrusion of Privacy
Article 39 of the Chinese Constitution
explicitly states that "The home of citizens of the
People's Republic of China is inviolable. Unlawful search
of, or intrusion into, a citizen's home is prohibited." In
spite of this, it has become common practice in the urban
centres of Tibet for Chinese officials to conduct arbitrary
and unwarranted searches of Tibetan houses as part of the
process monitoring residential permits. Though required
by law to produce a search warrant before entering, this
is in practice largely ignored, as many refugees testify:
Ngodup Tsomo,
27, from Taktse County in Lhasa Municipality, moved to
the Barkhor area of Lhasa city to do business. "Almost
every night, around midnight, the Barkhor security police
would bang on the doors of a Tibetan house and conduct an
inspection. The residents would have no chance to protest,
even though most of the time the officials would not have
a warrant. They would ask to see the residence permits
of every person in the house, and if they found one who
hadn't got one, or who hadn't reported his stay to the
authorities in Lhasa, they beat him and fined him 100
yuan. Sometimes they would even confiscate all of his
possessions as a punishment."
42 year-old
Choedup
from Chamdo Prefecture in the "TAR" moved to Lhasa when
he was 33. "I was living in the Ramoche area of the
city with my wife, where there were many Tibetans. The
authorities had refused to change my permanent residence
permit from Chamdo to Lhasa, so I had to report to the
Ramoche Municipality Office every month to get a temporary
permit. For this I had to pay 30 yuan every month. The
security police would conduct frequent checks at night
to check that all the residents of my area possessed
official permits, and once inside a house would often
conduct a search of the premises to see if there was
anything 'political'. In 1998, two relatives of mine came
to Lhasa on a pilgrimage and stayed in my house. Because
they were only here for a very short time, they didn't
get a temporary residence permit, but the authorities had
followed them from the temple and conducted an inspection
that evening. Two of my relatives and I were then detained
in Ramoche police station for two days and ordered to pay
a fine of 400 yuan. I was late paying the fine however,
and was arrested again a week later and detained for a
further three days. During this time some drunken officials
beat me severely to 'teach me a lesson', and following my
release I had to stay in bed for a week. I quickly came to
learn that this abuse and harassment is these days pretty
common in Lhasa."
Once again, these arbitrary searches are conducted largely
against Tibetans, and are entirely discriminatory. In
one illustrative instance, all Tibetans without residence
permits were forcibly removed from Lhasa on 21 March 1989 -
but no Chinese were made to leave. The Chinese live happily
without fear of assault, while Tibetans live everyday in
the fear of an "official" police visit. As
Scott Leckie
concluded,
"Through the imposition of these measures, the housing
domain in Tibet has been orchestrated into an arena of
insecurity, fear, suspicion and apprehension for the
average Tibetan dweller today."
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