Key
Facts on the Chinese Occupation
Invasion and Refugees
China's invasion by 35,000 troops in 1949 was an act of unprovoked aggression.
There is no generally accepted legal basis for China's claim of sovereignty.
Ten years later, 100,000 Tibetans fled with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's
spiritual and temporal ruler.
In 1993, the UN High Commissioner for refugees handled 3,700 Tibetan
cases. By 1994, an estimated 200 Tibetans per month were illegally crossing
the Himalayas into Nepal.
To avoid detection many refugees are forced to use the 19,000 ft. Nangpa-La
pass below Everest. The Nepalese authorities continue to turn refugees over
to the Chinese. In the first half of 1995 at least 200refugees were handed over
by the Nepalese.
Chinese
Administration of Tibet
China undertook by the 1951 Agreement not to interfere with Tibet's
existing system of government and society, but never kept these promises in
eastern Tibet and in 1959 reneged on the treaty altogether.
China has renamed two out of Tibet's three provinces as parts of the
Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, and renamed the remaining
province of U'Tsang as Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).
There is no evidence to support China's claim that TAR is autonomous:
all local legislation is subject to approval of the central government in Beijing;
all local government is subject to the regional party, which in Tibet has never
been run by a Tibetan. Some 20% of TAR Communist Party cadres are Chinese.
The Human Cost
Reprisals for the 1959 National Uprising alone involved the elimination
of 87,000 Tibetans by the Chinese count alone, according to a Radio Lhasa broadcast
of 1 October 1960. Yet Tibetan exiles claim that 430,000 died during the Uprising
and the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare, which continued until the
US withdrew support.
The International Commission of Jurists concluded in its reports, 1959and
1960, that there was a prima facie case of genocide committed by the Chinese
upon the Tibetan nation. These reports deal with events before the Cultural
Revolution.
Chinese
justice: Protest and Prisons
Exile sources estimate that up to 260,000 people died in prisons and
labour camps between 1950 and 1984.
Unarmed demonstrators have been shot without warning by Chinese police
on five occasions between 1987 and 1989. Amnesty International believes that
"at least 200 civilians" were killed by the security forces during
demonstrations in this period. There are also reports of detainees being summarily
executed.
Some 3,000 people are believed to have been detained for political offences
since September 1987, many of them for writing letters,distributing leaflets
or talking to foreigners about the Tibetans' right to independence.
The number of political detainees in Lhasa's main prison, Drapchi, is
reported to have doubled between 1990 and 1994. Numbers of women political prisoners
tripled. The vast majority of political inmates are monks or nuns. A political
prisoner in Tibet can now expect an average sentence of six and a half years.
Over 230 Tibetans were detained for political offences in 1995, a 50%increase
on 1994, bringing the total in custody to over 600.
Detailed accounts show that the Chinese conducted a campaign of torture
against Tibetan dissidents in prison from March 1989 to May 1990. However, torture
is still regularly used against political detainees today. Such prisoners are
held in sub-standard conditions, given insufficient food, forbidden to speak,
frequently held incommunicado and denied proper medical treatment.
Beatings and torture with electric shock batons are common; prisoners
have died from such treatment. A monk, Palden Gyatso, tortured by the Chinese
for over 30 years, in 1992 bribed prison guards to hand over implements of torture.
The weapons, smuggled out of Tibet, were displayed in the West in 1994 and 1995.
The Chinese have refused to allow independent observers to attend so-called
public trials. Prison sentences are regularly decided before the trial. Fewer
than 2% of cases in China are won by the defense.
Control of Education
Chinese replaced Tibetan as the official language. Despite official
pronouncements, there has been no practical change in this policy. Without an
adequate command of Chinese, Tibetans find it difficult to get work in the state
sector.
Secondary school children are taught all classes in Chinese. Although
English is a requirement for most university courses, Tibetan schoolchildren
cannot learn English unless they forfeit study of their own language. Many children
are sent away to China for education. In 1992there were 10,000 such children
in China, cut off from their own cultural heritage.
At all levels of Tibetan education, the Chinese have since 1994 strengthened
their drive to re-educate young Tibetans about their cultural past. They use
a distorted history program which omits reference to an independent Tibet.
Religious Intolerance
Religious practice was forcibly suppressed until 1979, and up to 6,000
monasteries and shrines have been destroyed.
The 1982 Constitution of the PRC guarantees freedom of religious belief
and yet China seeks to curb the total number of monks and nuns entering monasteries.
The restrictions in some areas prevent children under 18 from joining monasteries.
A senior UN human rights officer visiting Tibet in 1994 stressed that
monks and nuns imprisoned as a result of pro-independence activities were to
be considered as religious ( as opposed to political) prisoners because of the
arbitrary sentences which they received from Chinese authorities.
Nuns released from prison face double jeopardy as they are frequently
banned from rejoining their nunneries. This shows the PRC Constitution (i.e.
on freedom of religious belief) is too vaguely worded to safeguard its citizens
from such arbitrary action.
In 1995 the Chinese authorities rejected the child recognized by the
Dalai Lama as the rebirth of the Panchen Lama, and installed their own candidate.
New guidelines drawn up in 1994 stipulate that monasteries where monks
are engaged in political activities would be closed; the first such closures
were reported in early 1996.
Chinese Immigrants
Flood Tibet
Beijing now openly admits a national policy of deliberately encouraging
Chinese settlers into Tibet.
The influx of Chinese nationals has destabilized the economy. Forced
agricultural modernizations led to extensive crop failures and Tibet's first
recorded famine (1960-1962).
Resettlement of Chinese migrants has placed Tibetans in the minority
in many areas, including Lhasa, causing chronic unemployment among Tibetans.
In the East Tibetan border provinces of Kham and Amdo, the Chinese outnumber
Tibetans many times over.
Official figures put the number of non-Tibetans in the TAR at 79,000(excluding
Hui, PLA troops, and people who live in the region for less than a year). Free
Tibet Campaign believes the figure to be closer to 250,000to 300,000. For the
whole of Tibet the 1990 census gave a Chinese population of 4.2 million, and
a Tibetan population of 4.59 million. FreeTibet Campaign estimates the total
number of Chinese in Tibet as 5 to 5.5million.
Economic Development
Plans
Beijing wants to see 10% economic growth per year from the Tibetan region.
New wealth is being channeled into Chinese hands as 1994'sannouncement of a
railway for Tibet shows. The rail project will speed both the influx of Chinese
migrants as well as the extraction of Tibet's mineral reserves. The railway
dwarfs all China's other economic development and aid plans for Tibet
Chinese traders are favored by lower tax assessments and the dominant
position of Chinese in government administration.
Attempts by China to boost Tibet's agricultural output ignore centuries-old
methods of barley farming which are ideally suited to the Tibetan climate. With
Chinese backing, one European Union project for southern Tibet aims to grow
wheat at high altitude.
The Environment;
the Military
The Indian Government reports that three nuclear missile sites, and
an estimated 300,000 troops are stationed on Tibetan territory.
Up to 60 fully-laden timber trucks an hour are leaving Tibet on the
two major roads to China, according to tourist film shot in September 1988,thus
signaling deforestation and environmental damage. This is in contravention of
UN Resolution 1803 (XVII) 1962, which establishes the right of peoples to permanent
sovereignty over their natural resources.
China has admitted to dumping nuclear waste on the Tibetan plateau.
There is a 20 sq. km dump for radioactive pollutants near Lake Kokonor, the
largest lake on the Tibetan plateau.