UN Human Rights Council Takes Up Discussion on Tibet[Wednesday, 16 March 2011, 12:13 p.m.]
DHARAMSHALA:
The ongoing UN Human Rights Council’s 16th plenary session has been
apprised on the grave challenges faced by the Tibetan people inside
Tibet under the wrong policies of the Chinese government.Mr
Tenzin Samphel Kayta, on behalf of the Society for Threatened Peoples,
made a statement today on the deteriorating human rights situation in
Tibet, including the government policies which threaten the survival of
Tibet’s traditional nomadic herders.Mr Kayta informed the UNHRC
that the Chinese security have inflicted great suffering on Tibetans
since their peaceful protests against the government’s wrong policies.
“Tibetans have suffered immensely from Chinese security forces
crackdown – extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, secret
detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and custodial deaths,
denial of legal rights and lack of the independence of the judiciary
and harsh sentences,” he said. The Tibetans also suffer death
penalty and intensified crackdown on spiritual teachers, human rights
defenders, environmentalists, writers, intellectuals, artists and
Tibetan entrepreneurs, he added.He further informed that
council that since March 2008 protest, two Tibetans were executed and
five political prisoners had been given death sentence with 2-year
reprieve by a Chinese court. “According to Tibetan sources,
there are 831 known political prisoners of conscience as of 30 December
2010. Out of which, 360 were known to have been legally convicted by
the Chinese courts. Furthermore, 12 Tibetans were serving life
imprisonment term. In 2010, 188 known Tibetans have been arrested and
detained, out of which 71 have already been sentenced by the courts,”
he said.“These tragic realities confronted by the Tibetan
people is a direct result of China’s slogan of “people’s war” to
suppress the uprising. Today, the Chinese authorities do not tolerate
any expression of Tibetan aspiration. The reality of President Hu
Jintao’s “harmonious society” for Tibetans is a climate of fear,
intimidation, domination and repression,” he added.Mr Kayta also voiced deep concern over the Chinese government policies impacting the livelihoods of Tibetan nomadic herders. “On
3 October 2007 three special procedure mandate holders of this Council
intervened the Chinese government’s policy of relocating Tibetan nomads
and herders – “these policies have had a very adverse impact on the
traditional lifestyles and living patterns in Tibetan areas, affecting
directly the fabric of traditional Tibetan life and devastating the
economy of these communities. The implementation of these policies
contributes to the challenges that Tibetan cultural and religious
identity face today.” So far Chinese government had forcibly relocated
1.43 millions Tibetan nomads and herders from their ancestral land
devoid of proper consultation,” he said.He apprised the council
about how the Chinese government regulates their “legal system” to
become the “authority” of the reincarnation process of Tibetan
Buddhism. “The communist cadres not only oversee the
management of Tibet’s religious institutions but, deny Tibetan monks
and nuns in receiving basic education from spiritual teachers in
Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, culture and science. Instead, the Chinese
authorities are enforcing psychological indoctrination through the
so-called “patriotic education” under which Tibetan practitioners are
forced to denounce their spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai
Lama,” he told the council.He told the council that the Tibetan
people had rejected the so-called “Regulation on Management Measures
for the Reincarnation of Living Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism” imposed by
the Chinese government on 18 July 2007.“In response a Special
Meeting of the heads of the four religious schools of Tibetan Buddhism
and the traditional Bon religion held in India on 3 May 2008 and
adopted resolution in which they not only rejected atheist
determination of religious domain but also declared that in future no
reincarnated Tibetan spiritual leaders of the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon
religions shall be considered as “true unless they have the final
approval of the heads of the respective religious traditions,” he added.
