German parliamentary rights experts call trip to Tibet one-sided Monday, 20 April 2009, 4:40 p.m.
Dharamshala: Members
of a German parliamentary delegation allowed to visit Tibet said Monday
that they were constantly escorted by Chinese minders during their trip
and said it was deeply one-sided, German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) reported Monday.Holgar
Haibach, the head of the four-member delegation from the human rights
committee of the German Bundestag, said many of the group’s questions
were not answered and their minders in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, wanted
to give the Germans the impression that all was normal in Tibet, DPA
said in its report.’The one-sidedness was formidable,’ he said,
adding that the delegation was not allowed to visit a prison during its
three-day stay in Lhasa. The delegation added that the Chinese army’s presence there was unchanged and massive. Haibach
said the Chinese minders told the delegation that all monks went
voluntarily to ‘patriotic education campaigns,’ but one monk told the
delegation that participation was required. The campaign was
introduced after the unrest in March 2008 throughout Tibet. While the
Chinese side has accused His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tibetan
Buddhism’s spiritual leader, of provoking the unrest, trials nearly two
weeks ago in which four Tibetans were sentenced to death for fatal
arson fires did not present any findings on the accusation, delegation
member Burkhardt Mueller-Soenksen said. The trip was the first by German human rights experts since the outbreak of the protests against Chinese rule. China’s violent crackdown on Tibetan
protesters since 10 March 2008, left 220 Tibetans dead, 1,294 injured
and 290 sentenced. More than 5,600 were arrested or detained and over
1,000 disappeared. Another
committee delegation travelled at the same time to the far-western
region of Xinjiang, where Muslim Uigurs complain of oppression from
China’s government. The delegations had earlier discussed the
death penalty; administrative detention, which in China can be ordered
without trial; and other human rights issues while in Beijing. There
were always two ‘red lines’ in the discussions with Chinese
authorities, Haibach said: Neither Chinese national unity nor the
authority of the Communist Party could be called into question.
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