The Iron fist of Chinese rule in Tibet

Ever since Tibetan representatives affirmed China’s sovereignty in 1951 under duress, the lives of the Tibetan people have constantly deteriorated. Ever since the protests in 2008, more than 150 people have self-immolated as a form of protest. The torture, mistreatment and deaths of thousands that resulted have repercussions that are felt even today.

Relatives of protestors are routinely harassed, thrown into prison for “reeducation”, denied political and medical rights, and even killed outright if deemed a threat. In the meantime, China has taken advantage of the Qinghai-Tibet railway to migrate so many Chinese into the region that Tibetans have become a minority. The Communist Party has not only publicly stated its plans to colonize the region, but also deem it a nearly impossible task. The main reason for this is that the majority of Chinese tend to leave and go back after a few years of being unable to adapt.

The treatment of the original nomadic herders that lived in the region have been even worse. More than a million nomads were forced to leave the grasslands in a widely ridiculed excuse to protect the ecology of the grasslands. After two years of living in urban environments, they were forced to abandon their new homes in order to use them as tourist centers and government housing. 2017 saw a state sponsored forced resettlement wherein Tibetan nomads returned to the grasslands without the animals that were their main source of livelihood. By 2018, Chinese security forces in the region were forcibly promoting “bilingual education” by arresting anyone promoting the Tibetan mother tongue and related issues as an ‘underworld gang crime’.

The 2019 case of Choegyal Wangpo is a chilling indicator of just how much the CCP has abandoned basic human rights in Tibet. A case of donating to earthquake victims in Nepal became national security issue where a whole village was terrorized and nearly 20 monks arrested with prison sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years.

Following Xi Jinping’s directive to improve security in the region, the Public Security Bureau, the State Security Bureau, the United Front Work Department, the Religious Affairs Bureau, the TAR Internet Affairs Office, and the Internet Management Department within the Public Security Bureau jumped to establish political achievements. We don’t have any idea of the extent of secret trials being held in the region. With the introduction of cash rewards for ratting out ‘dissidents’, cadres at every level of government are making the lives of remaining Tibetans in the region even more difficult.

A recent report from Freedom House listed Tibet as the worst country in the world. Another feature of Chinese rule in Tibet is the political re-education camps which feature the regular rape of nuns and Tibetan women as well as young boys in order to break their ethnic identity and will. The systematic abuse is not limited to that as the use of beatings, cattle prods, and pouring excrement is a regular tool used by Chinese forces in order to subdue ‘dissidents’ in the region.

China has criminalized any form of social activism in the region and is hard at work destroying the influence of any form of traditional leaders at the grassroot levels under the excuse of eradicating ‘mafia-like’ gangs. There is a massive database of Tibetans in the region wherein anyone affiliated to dissidents even decades later is deprived of political rights and access to jobs and healthcare. This is by no means an irrelevant threat in a remote corner of the globe.

Tibet is one of the issues that China is sensitive about globally. What this translates to is the establishment of political task in the United Front Works Department (UFWD) which has been subverting opposition influence to the CCP for more than half a century. Apart from confusing ethnic minorities on their rights of self-determinism internally and setting up a false narrative, they are also active internationally through co-opting ethnic Chinese individuals and communities abroad. The spy case against the Overseas China Affairs Office was a prime example of the UFWD in action.

The launch of the ‘China Association for Preservation and Development for Tibet Culture’ is a “NGO” that has been set up by the UFWD for the sole purpose of defrauding the world on China’s human rights track record in Tibet. Another institution that is being led by former top CCP officials is the ‘China Society for Human Rights Studies’ which deeply studies foreign human rights in the U.S. as a propaganda tool. The presence of the government organized non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) is an obstructionist tactic that China is utilizing to establish itself as a paragon of human rights in front of the United Nations.

Three years after the whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang died of COVID, China is still standing firm in maintaining one voice when it comes to international affairs. More than 23 GONGOs have falsified data in front of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in order to defend China’s track record of breaking international treaties and covenants it has signed. The ‘rule of law’ is noticeably absent in China, where there was the infamous 709 crackdown against more than 300 lawyers, paralegals and assistants. The presence of Shen Yongxiang inside the CESCR is of immense help to the GONGOs parading their false narrative of a happy reality within China and is by no means the only example of the UFWD interfering in the operation of UN bodies when it comes to protecting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and increasing its influence.