Human Rights Situation inside Tibet
Dharamshala: The UN, EU and Human Rights Desk of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration brought out a paper on “Human Rights Situation inside Tibet” on Thursday, 4 November.Following is the full text:
Human Rights Situation inside Tibet
Central Tibetan Administration
Gangchen Kyishong
Dharamsala, HP, INDIA
PRC’s ETHNIC POLICY: A Brief Overview
China has 154 ethnic autonomous areas including five provincial-level autonomous regions, namely, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Guangzi, 30 autonomous prefectures, and 119 autonomous counties.
Beijing’s nationality and ethnic policy is clearly stated in its Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities. The Communist Party of China adopted Stalin’s definition of ethnic groups—“a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”.1
When Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, China pursued relatively moderate ethnic policies.2 Rather than integrationist policies, the state prioritized co-existence of ethnic minorities. Regional autonomy for ethnic minorities was further increased on paper in 1982 when the PRC Constitution of 1954 was amended.
In response to the pro-independence demonstrations in Tibet during the late eighties, the PRC authorities embarked on “economic and cultural integration of ethnic minorities”. This policy seems to be further reaffirmed in China’s White Paper on Ethnic Policy3 when it asserts, “Adhering to common prosperity and development of all ethnic groups is the fundamental stance of China’s ethnic policy”.4
The PRC explains fundamental feature of its ethnic policy as thus:
- Equality among ethnic groups
- Regional Autonomy
- Preferential policies in political, economic, cultural and educational spheres
- Prohibition of racial discrimination
I. POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
The PRC claim that there is an increase in ethnic minority officials; 2.994 million ethnic minority officials countrywide by 2006 end which is 3.8 times that of 1978.5 It is true that all the governors of China’s five provincial-level ethnic minority autonomous regions have ethnic minority backgrounds.
In actuality, members of ethnic minorities rarely occupied decision-making posts. An estimated 50% government cadres are Tibetans, yet their representation and authority in decision-making bodies is only nominal.
The most important and powerful post in the provincial minority autonomous region is that of the Party Secretary. Currently, none of the five autonomous provinces has an ethnic minority leader on this post.6 Since the establishment of “Tibet Autonomous Region” (“TAR”) in 1965, no Tibetan has ever held this post.
II. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Beijing claims to prioritize and realize economic development for Tibetans in Tibet. The PRC discussed two models of development for Tibet in the 1980s. The first model promotes Tibetans actively participating in and leading the development process. The second model urges rapid development in Tibet with the help of experienced and skilled Han Chinese in the initial phases. Around mid-1980s, the PRC authorities decided on the second model.
During China’s Third Work Forum on Tibet in 1994, stronger emphasis was laid on “stability and security control” through economic development. The 2001 Fourth Work Forum re-emphasized the strategy of encouraging economic prosperity with the aim to eliminate nationalist sentiments.
PRC’s development model / strategy lacks right-based and need-based approach
i) Right-based approach is not considered as the Tibetans lack decision-making authority and participatory power in the development process due to absence of real autonomy.
ii) Need-based approach is violated when the state investment is heavily focused on infrastructure development such as highways, railways, etc. Even within the hard infrastructure, development efforts are concentrated on trade, services, and government and communist party administration where the Tibetan participation is minimal. China’s economic growth circumvents 80 percent of Tibetan population that still subsist on agriculture and nomadic pastoralism.
The White Paper on Ethnic Policy issued by the PRC government acknowledges the priority that China has given to construction projects when it states, “Priority given to construction projects is to consolidate the foundation for further development”.7
Inadequate effort towards Human Development
According to the 1997 report by the United Nations Development Programme, Human Poverty Index is identified as survival, knowledge and a decent standard of living.8 It is found that the government spending on education, health and agriculture is relatively less and Tibet lags behind in all of these areas.
Gabrielle Lafitte, a development expert, argues that despite large state investments into Tibet, “Tibet would still rank at the very bottom of the UN’s list of nations (if it were a nation) along with countries like Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique etc.”9 Another expert, June Teufel Dreyer, said, “Even a cursory glance at the Statistical Yearbook of China will confirm that the “TAR” ranks last on virtually every indicator: total revenue, taxes remitted, per capita income, literary and even life expectancy at birth”.10
Economics as political control
Chinese Marxism held a viewpoint that a population that is economically prosperous is less inclined to hold nationalist view. Chen Kuiyan, former Party Secretary of the “TAR”, once said, “Only with economic development and improvement of prestige of the country, and with people getting rich and tired of splittist groups can they finally make correct judgments and give up their purpose of splitting the country”.11 Most of the development projects in Tibet such as the Western Development Programme have an underlying political agenda to maintain stability.
Wang Lixiong, a Chinese scholar has rightly said, “Economic benefits plus the “carrot” and “big stick” policy of high political pressure have superficially maintained peace in Tibet for the past 13 years. But, the recent Lhasa riots once again proved that this policy cannot solve the Tibet question, and under China’s political system, the authorities have no other way to govern Tibet.”12
Urban-oriented development
China’s development policy has largely benefited the urban areas in Tibet where majority of the Han immigrants live and where only 20 percent of Tibet’s population resides.
Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative), a Beijing-based lawyer’s organization and think-tank, in their investigative report noted, “In the process of modernization, agriculture as the traditional industry is in a vulnerable position.” The report acknowledges “Lhasa’s urban standard of living as no less than in city found in the developed Han areas”. At the same time, it expresses concern that “when comparing Tibetan areas and Han areas amid the process of rapid modernization and hastened marketization, different regions within Tibetan areas and urban and rural areas within Tibetan areas all demonstrate a relentless trend of growing disparities”.13
Tibetans as marginalized group
It is reported that, “The people drawing the greatest benefit from the thriving economy are the incomers, non-Tibetans; and because Tibetans lack capital and skills, this is contributing to them becoming increasingly marginalized. In Lhasa, there are Sichuan restaurants everywhere, run by people from Sichuan. Taxi drivers are mainly non-Tibetan outsiders from Henan, Sichuan, Hunnan and Shaanxi.”14
The report further notes, “Economically, in terms of skills and in terms of adapting to value systems, Tibetans have no way of competing with non-Tibetans in the modernization process” due to lack of skills and Chinese language proficiency.
Wang Lixiong believes that though the “government does not organize large-scale immigration, it nevertheless encourages it”. This has resulted in what he calls “Chinasization of Tibet, the root cause of conflict today”.15
GDP versus human development
It is said that government funding to Tibet has led to growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but not the income and actual living condition of the Tibetan population. This is because of the fact that central government spending is concentrated in the state-sector.
Tibetan development versus Chinese development
There is a conflict between Chinese and Tibetans over what development means. For the Tibetans, “prosperity is more about freedoms such as religious belief, a respect for people, a respect for life, the kind of prosperity you get from extending charity to others” (Gongmeng report).
The PRC authorities, on the other hand, are adamant to follow its old developmental model. China’s White Paper on Ethnic Policy states, “The state is convinced that quickening the social and economic development of minority areas is the fundamental solution to China’s ethnic issues”.
Robert Barnett sums up the core development problem in Tibet as “the squandering of political capital by interfering in cultural life”.16
Falsified official statistics
In the process of reporting to the central leadership, many reports are exaggerated and based on falsified statistics. UNDP reports that “TAR” fares poorly than other areas in China in income, poverty, health and education. Therefore, it is imperative to understand that Gross National Product (GNP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) do not always give an accurate picture of economic development.
Local officials exaggerate and inflate development statistics thereby distorting the actual picture of progress. One such incident is reported by Luwo Tsetan:
In October 2007 when the data for the Universal Nine-Year Compulsory Education and the Elimination of Illiteracy among the Youths and Adults was initially collected and established [in Chigdril County, Golog], it was required that the number of students in the county must reach about 1,300 and at that time the number of students in the school was 700. Among these students, some are graduates from a certain senior high school, and others were students who graduated from the Tibetan school but were herding at home. Still others were monks. They all came to school to deal with inspection, thus, as soon as the inspection team left, the students could go home. Initially when the students came to register for the classes, the county authorities promised to give them salaries…though they lived in the school for no more than two months, in the dossier it was recorded as four-year intensive class”.17
On account of such happenings, Gyaltsen Norbu, former “TAR” Chairman, said in 1997, “We should do away with these unhealthy trends in boasting and exaggeration and hiding the truth from the higher levels in the work of aiding the poor”.18
III. EDUCATION
Ideo-political content in education
Education in Tibet is used as a tool to inculcate love for communism and the “motherland”.
The ideological education has been strengthened in 2009 with the re-launch of the “patriotic re-education” campaign, integration of ethnic unity education into both examination and education system etc. China’s Ministry of Education and State Ethnic Affairs Commission issued “Guiding Program on Ethnic Unity Education in Schools” on 26 November 2008, to promote Communist Party policy on ethnic minorities with emphasis on issues “safeguarding the unification of the motherland”, “opposing separatism” etc.19
Assimilation
With the aim of assimilation, religious, historical and cultural education of the minority is curtailed in Tibet. Minority group’s histories, traditions, languages and culture in education are neither fully respected nor taught, as it should be. This is evident from the standard nationalized curriculum that China’s education system uses all over the country. It is held that “despite wide variation in geography, agriculture, climate, language and local customs, the same subjects are taught with the same materials almost all over the country”.20
Hence, minority children face a sense of inferiority about their racial identity. One problem is “that minority nationality children become very self-abased when they find no reference to their own culture or history in school materials. When they find there is no content which can make them feel proud of being a person of their own nationality, they lose self-esteem and interest in schooling. This is reflected in high drop-out rate of minority children.”21
The educational curriculum should include world history, Tibet’s history and the history of China.
Tibetan language
It is said that positive development of school education is difficult as long as the language problem is not solved. Language is described as “a carrier of the knowledge and experiences accumulated by a nation, or a group throughout history”.22
In acknowledging the problems related to China’s language in Tibet, Prof. Badeng Nima said, “During the years that Tibet has been influenced by the Chinese economy, the language problem has steadily worsened”.23 Despite legal guarantees for linguistic rights to minorities, Chinese language is used for administration and commerce. It is said that since 1997, Chinese became the medium of instruction in almost every Tibetan schools.
Tibetan language should be given priority both in the course curriculum, as a medium of instruction and as a language of commerce and administration.
Rhetoric and reality
China came under examination at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) conducted by the UN Human Rights Council in February 2009. China’s report to the Working Group on the UPR claims, “By the end of 2000, nine-year compulsory education had been made virtually universal throughout the country”. 24
On the contrary, some outside observers put the illiteracy rate in Tibet as high as 74.31 percent.25 Tibet, therefore, remains one of the least literate regions in China.26
Gongmeng’s report sheds light on the state of education in Tibet’s remote areas,
When conducting interviews in the Qingshui region, the local villagers said that whenever the higher administrations came to inspect illiteracy eradication work, the township called the youths who had left to work back for 10 days of mandatory training. Ten days later, they are issued with an elementary school graduation certificate, and as such they are counted during the inspection as having “escaped illiteracy”.
In addition, the local quality of teachers and standards of education are low… In particular there is a lack of high-level and highly educated teaching talent, and in remote areas there is even only “one school, one teacher”.
IV. TIBETAN BUDDHISM
“Patriotic re-education” Campaign: In the aftermath of the 2008 protests in Tibet, China has increased the strength and frequency of “patriotic re-education” campaign for both the monastic and general populace. Hao Peng, the Deputy Communist Party Chief for Tibet, called for strengthening “patriotic education so as to guide the masses of monks to continuously display the patriotic tradition.”27
The campaign is one of the major tools used by Beijing to conform Buddhism within Communist framework and to test clergy’s allegiance to the State. It is virtually impossible to obtain a full religious education. Thousands of monks and nuns have faced arrest, expulsion and detention for non-obedience to the official diktats.
Internal versus external Buddhism
The PRC tries to appropriate Tibetan Buddhism with its legal stipulation on so-called normal religion. The “normal” religion is state-controlled and “patriotic”.
China’s emphasis on externalized form of Buddhism is apparent when its White Paper on Ethnic Policy states:
In Tibet, there are over 1,700 venues for Tibetan Buddhist activities, with 46,000 monks and nuns living in temples. Traditional Buddhist activities are carried out there normally – from sutra studies and debates to tonsure and Abhisheka (consecration) and other Buddhist practices, as well as the system of academic degrees and ordination through examination. Prayer flags, Mani piles and Tibetan Buddhist believers are seen everywhere in Tibet.
A Buddhist practitioner requires long hours of study, contemplation and meditation on fundamental aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. A Gonpa (lit. seclusion), or a monastery, is usually located at a distance of approx. two miles from villages and towns. Such seclusion and distance helps a practitioner to achieve and maintain physical and mental detachment from worldly life.
Currently, the monks and nuns are subjected to regular political education session that in itself is a major intrusion into their religious study. They are also appraised for their loyalty. All such acts hamper the acquisition of essential Tibetan Buddhism.
“TAR” –Specific Implementing and Reincarnation Measures
On 19 September 2006, “TAR” People’s Government passed the “TAR”-Specific Implementing Measure as well as the Reincarnation Measures. The Implementing Measures specifies state control over religious practitioners, reincarnated lamas, religious practice and the places of Tibetan Buddhism. It also includes a legal framework for the Reincarnation Measures and the two together codify a comprehensive approach to control the selection, installation and education of reincarnate lamas. It is evident that the PRC authorities are trying to make way for future control of the reincarnation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Democratic Management Committees
As the administrative body of a monastery and nunnery, the DMC consists of politically vetted monks and nuns who supervise the functioning, activities and curriculum of the religious institution. Every monk and nuns has to be on guard as to whether their religious study, belief and practice are in conformity with the requirements of the “work teams” that come to conduct “patriotic re-education” campaigns in the monastery.
Anti-Dalai Lama Campaign
The Dalai Lama is the embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism. Ninety percent of Tibetan population is Buddhists. Hence, the anti-Dalai Lama campaign that PRC authorities impose on the Tibetans through different forms and manners, puts the monastic community in a direct conflict between their religious loyalty to the Dalai Lama, or their required allegiance to the Communist Party. The clergy are the most affected by this battle of choices and consequences.
Religious figures and Geshes
It is a recurring pattern that popular religious figures always face Chinese persecution and harassment on some pretext or the other. Such religious figures are believed to have the potential to influence the local populace into political activism. Therefore, these religious figures come under attack. Some were put in prison while others remain under house arrests.
Geshes have a significant role in the transmission of religion and preservation of Tibetan culture. Only the “politically correct” lamas enjoy “full rights of religious freedom”. While others are denied registration and their access to monasteries to teach lay Tibetans are hindered.
V. RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Ethnic animosity and discrimination
As noted by Beijing scholars of Gongmeng, China’s “over-propagandizing of ethnic violence” during 2008 protests has resulted in increased ethnic tension and discrimination. Tibetans have reportedly been turned away from hotels on the basis of their ethnicity.
In her blog posting titled “Ethnic Cleansing in Lhasa”, Woeser reports that Tibetans from Amdo and Kham, who do not possess household registration or temporary residence permits, are either expelled or detained. Woeser laments, “Lhasa is currently being silenced and experiencing ethnic discrimination, ethnic segregation, and ethnic cleansing”28
Minority versus majority
Tibetans as a minority group are objectified and portrayed as exotic and backward. Rather than promote and protect the actual culture and tradition of Tibetans, such representation only serves the larger propaganda and purpose of the PRC.
Some scholars such as Dru C. Gladney argue that such representation of minorities only helps to construct the majority discourse. China calls itself as a multi-national and democratic nation based on the Soviet model. But everyone knows that actual autonomy is only but in name. In order to project itself as a modern multi-national state and to avert outside criticism over its Tibet policies, Gladney says, “it is not surprising that Tibetan are often represented as the most willing subjects of Chinese ‘democratic liberation”.29
(source:tibet.net)
