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Annual Report Annual Report Human Rights Situation in Tibet 2013 Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy www.tchrd.org Contents Executive Summary 1 Civil and Political Rights 5 Religious Repression 43 Crackdown on Self-immolation Protests 59 Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 68 Development of Disparity 84 Excerpts from Interviews Taken in Amdo, Tibet 121 Understanding Internally Displaced Persons 145 (Special Emphasis: Tibetan Displacement) The Re-education of Tibet:Examining the Human Rights 153 Implications of ‘Patriotic Education’ in Tibet List of Self-immolation Protests Inside Tibet 162 TCHRD Political Prisoners Database 184 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2013 was Xi Jinping’s first full year as the President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). During Xi Jinping’s first year, the PRC released numerous human rights and reform documents for its second Universal Periodic Review and in its 3rd Plenum Decision. These human rights documents describe human rights successes and reforms that do not exist in the PRC and least of all in Tibet. The PRC released these documents as 27 Tibetans committed self-immolation protests in Tibet demanding hu- man rights and freedom and Xi Jinping fought against non-approved reform efforts. The total number of known self-immolation protests has now reached 125. In April 2013, the Party’s central committee issued a secret internal directive known as Document No. 9 that prohibited speaking about Western constitutional democracy, promoting the universal value of human rights, promoting civic participation, and promoting media independence. These basic values were labeled as subversive and undermine the idea that Xi Jinping is serious about implementing re- form. In accordance with the anti-reform rhetoric, “mass-line” policy was launched in Tibet in 2013. The Party Secretary for Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Chen Quanguo, recognized that there were two new battlefields in Tibet the CCP needed to control: traditional media, such as newspapers, radio, television, and journals; and the internet. The “mass-line” policy brought together various pre-existing and newly created mass propaganda and mass surveillance systems under a single policy. The effects of the “mass-line” policy were demon- strated in Diru (Ch: Biru) County in Nagchu (Ch: Naqu) Prefecture, TAR. From 8 September 2013 to 5 October 2013, in less than a month, some 18,000 Chinese cadres entered Diru to make Tibetans fly the PRC’s flag next to their prayer flags. When Tibetans refused and protested, they were beaten, fired upon with live ammunition, and arrested en masse. In September 2013, the PRC sent 60,000 cadres into TAR—approximately one cadre for every 50 people in TAR. The “mass-line” policy and other harsh measures used in Tibet have undermined the hope for real, meaningful reform in the PRC. Instead, the human rights situation in Tibet continued to get worse in 2013. The PRC continued many of its policies of violently suppressing peaceful protests and im- prisoning Tibetans artists, monastics, and relatives of self-immolators. Additionally, many of the policies the PRC has implemented for years have reached a point where they are beginning to cause permanent damage to Tibetan culture and the environment. China’s first set of human rights documents praised the PRC’s success in human rights. It talked almost exclusively about how the economic development of the PRC had helped human rights. To make this argument the PRC needed to provide data that hid the dire situation of Tibetans and other economic minorities. The PRC accomplished this by only looking at the PRC as a whole and not looking at or providing data concerning ethnic minorities. For example, the PRC announced that it had fulfilled a Millennium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by two-thirds. However, 1 the MMR in rural Tibet is 13-16 times higher than the national average. This disparity is lost when the data focuses on development in the PRC as a whole and not in specific areas likeTibet. In Tibet, Tibetans are suffering. The PRC’s forcible resettlement of nomads has resulted in the almost complete destruction of their way of life. The nomads are not consulted and rarely paid the compen- sation they were promised. Many are forced to live in newly built urban areas that cannot sustain their way of life and where they receive less government support than parts of Tibet with a large migrant Chinese population. It is estimated that by the end of 2013, 90% of all Tibetan nomads living in Qin- ghai Province, which contains parts of Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham, will be resettled. Ostensibly, the nomads are forced off their land to protect the environment. In reality, the nomads are replaced by State Owned Enterprises that build mines to extract natural resources from the Tibetan Plateau. Large quantities of oil, gold, lithium, copper, chrome, and other natural resources are extract- ed in Tibet and then sent east. Profits from these minerals do not reach Tibetans who do not operate or own the mines. The extraction of natural resources, and other industries brought into Tibet, pollutes the air and drinking supplies. In 2013, Tibetans staging peaceful protests against the mining operations were violently suppressed. These Tibetans were protesting the loss of the rights the PRC claims to protect and as a result were subjected to further human rights abuses that the PRC refuses to acknowledge. In 2013, Tibetans continued to be tortured, arrested without reason, and sent to detention centers without due process. TCHRD has recorded the details of 119 Tibetans who were either arrested or sentenced in 2013; two Tibetans each received death sentence and suspended death sentence. A significant number of Tibet- ans were released from Re-education Through Labour camps in 2013. In the reporting year, Tibetans in Tibet continued to face hardships in travelling outside Tibet and also within Tibet due to restrictions placed by the Chinese government. A total of 157 Tibetans managed to evade arrest in the hands of Chinese border guards and flee into exile in India. In response to the increasing number of Tibetans committing self-immolations to protect the PRC’s occupation and policies, the PRC’s response to self-immolations became more severe. In 2012, peo- ple in the same family or village as a self-immolator were subjected to political education campaigns and other punitive measures. In 2013, the PRC began sending people associated with self-immolators to prison or reeducation through labor. The PRC has also responded to the self-immolations by striking preventing Tibetans from perform- ing religious funeral rites for self-immolators. This is the only way for the PRC to strike against the deceased self-immolators who can no longer be imprisoned, beaten, or tortured. This renewed assault on freedom of religion is an expansion of policies already existing in the PRC. In the first two weeks of 2013, the PRC arrested fourteen senior monks at Sera, Drepung, and Ganden monasteries and the Jokhang Temple for “political reeducation.” 2 The use of “political reeducation” campaigns has existed since the mid-1990s but after 2008, it has been used much more frequently, not only against monasteries and monastics but also against secular writers, poets, and intellectuals. This is not only an attack on freedom of expression and dissent in Tibet. It is an attack on Tibetan creativity and culture. Like the persecution of nomads and religious institutions, the persecution of artists for vague offenses like “political activities” is designed to un- dermine Tibetan culture. In 2013, at least 8 Tibetan artists were detained or arrested by the PRC. The assaults on Tibetan culture appear to be designed, in part, to sanitize Tibetan culture and make it more tourist-friendly. In 2013, the PRC began major construction in Lhasa to make the city more appealing to tourists from eastern parts of the country. This includes the construction of shopping malls and parking structures around ancient Tibetan religious sites like the Jokhang Temple. In 2013, 100 experts sent a letter to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UN- ESCO) and Xi Jinping warning of the destruction of Tibetan cultural history. An estimated 15 mil- lion Chinese tourists visited Lhasa in 2013. To accommodate the tourists, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and multinational corporations, such as Intercontinental Hotels, have started building the infrastructure, including roads, hotels, airports, and railways. In 2013, the PRC finished implementing the “Grid” system in Lhasa. This surveillance system works with pre-existing infrastructure to ensure that the police can watch and control everything that hap- pens in Lhasa. There is talk of expanding the system to other Tibetan cities in the future. In 2013, the use of surveillance was used to monitor the movement and activities of Tibetans places subject to a crackdown. The increased assaults on Tibetan culture have all come during a year when the PRC announced nu- merous “reforms.” These reforms include abolishing reeducation through labor, a form of arbitrary detention based on the gulags that allowed the police to unilaterally send a person to a labor camp for up to four years. However, while these reforms are encouraging they have not yet been implemented. Despite the promising rhetoric coming from the PRC, in 2013 increased crackdowns, violence, cul- tural destruction, and surveillance have been much more real than any proposed reforms. In this annual report, we will discuss in detail the human rights situation in Tibet focusing on Civil and Political Rights, Religious Repression, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Religious Repres- sion, the PRC’s western development strategy, and self-immolations. Also included in the report are research papers produced in collaboration with human rights students at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
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