The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet welcomed the invitation to visit China this year during her report at the 43rd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council on 27 February. Expressing her intention behind the visit, Ms. Bachelet announced that “we will seek to analyse in-depth the human rights situation in China, including the situation of members of the Uyghur minority.”
Welcoming the announcement, the President of Central Tibetan Administration Dr. Lobsang Sangay said, “this visit is the need of the hour. However, no analysis of the human rights situation in China can be complete without a visit to Tibet. Tibetans in Tibet have been facing severe human rights violations in over 60 years of illegal occupation by China. The non-existent civic space has forced 154 Tibetans to self-immolate in Tibet since 2009. The UN must step up and we urge the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet while she visits China to see for herself the unfathomable situation in which Tibetans are living- under constant fear and surveillance.”
If permitted, Ms. Bachelet would be the second High Commissioner to visit Tibet. The last visit to Tibet by a High Commissioner was in 1998, exactly 22 years back by Ms. Mary Robinson. China has repeatedly denied access to UN officials including the High Commissioners despite holding several talks. In fact, in his final address to the UN Human Rights Council as the High Commissioner, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein called out China for not giving unfettered access to Tibet and East Turkestan (CHN: Xinjiang.)
Ms. Bachelet has also requested for “unfettered access for an advance team” to China to prepare for her visit. However, China has always chaperoned the few UN experts who were permitted to China. The last available report on the visit by UN expert to China clearly underlines how the expert was constantly monitored and followed by “security officials posing as private citizens” and even took individuals into custody for trying to meet the expert.
The human rights situation in Tibet has been worsening. There is absolutely no freedom whatsoever for Tibetans. Tibet has been consecutively ranked the second least free region in the world by the Freedom House. Tibetans who raise their voice against such injustices are being detained and tortured.
“To understand the situation in East Turkestan, one has to know what has happened and continues to happen in Tibet. It is the sheer resilience of Tibetans which has prevented the total assimilation and Sinicization of Tibetans. Without addressing the root problems in Tibet one cannot hope to achieve the betterment of human rights records in China,” remarked President Dr. Lobsang Sangay.
-Filed by Tibet Bureau Geneva
