Chinese treatment of Tibetans

The Dalai Lama has said:

Human rights violations in Tibet are among the most serious in the world. Discrimination is practiced in Tibet under a policy of apartheid which the Chinese call "segregation and assimilation." [cite journal |title=The Political Philosophy of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. Selected Speeches and Writings|publisher=Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre (pp. 248)]

According to the Heritage Foundation:

If the matter of Tibet's sovereignty is murky, the question about the PRC's treatment of Tibetans is all too clear. After invading Tibet in 1950, the Chinese communists killed over one million Tibetans, destroyed over 6,000 monasteries, and turned Tibet's northeastern province, Amdo, into a gulag housing, by one estimate, up to ten million people. A quarter of a million Chinese troops remain stationed in Tibet. In addition, some 7.5 million Chinese have responded to Beijing's incentives to relocate to Tibet; they now outnumber the 6 million Tibetans. Through what has been termed Chinese apartheid, ethnic Tibetans now have a lower life expectancy, literacy rate, and per capita income than Chinese inhabitants of Tibet. [Lasater, Martin L. & Conboy, Kenneth J. [http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/EM177.cfm "Why the World Is Watching Beijing's Treatment of Tibet"] , Heritage Foundation, October 9, 1987.]

In 2001 representatives of Tibet succeeded in gaining accreditation at a United Nations-sponsored meeting of non-governmental organizations. On August 29 Jampal Chosang, the head of the Tibetan coalition, stated that "Tibetan culture, religion, and national identity are considered a threat" to China. [Goble, Paul. [http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2001/9/4_3.html "China: Analysis From Washington -- A Breakthrough For Tibet"] , "World Tibet Network News", [http://www.tibet.ca/en/ Canada Tibet Committee] , August 31, 2001.]

The Tibetans that live in Tibet now believe that the Chinese government saved them from the horrible human rights violations by the Tibetan upper class, most notably the Dalai Lama. The former treatment of the common Tibetan people by slave owners (the slave owners have now fled to other countries such as India to resist getting caught) has caused most lower class Tibetans to become very thankful. Currently, this thankfulness is obvious in Tibet. Unfortunately, the banished upper class in India has Western support, thus they have more media influence.

The Tibet Society of the UK has called on the British government to "condemn the apartheid regime in Tibet that treats Tibetans as a minority in their own land and which discriminates against them in the use of their language, in education, in the practice of their religion, and in employment opportunities." [ [http://www.tibet-vigil.org.uk/wayforward.html "What do we expect the United Kingdom to do?"] , Tibet Vigil UK, June 2002. Accessed June 25, 2006.]

ee also

*Chinese settlements in Tibet
*Tibet Autonomous Region

References