The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pompously celebrated its centenary on 1 July but for the Tibetans this occasion is another distressful reminder of the CCP’s continued occupation and oppression of Tibet. The day marked 100 years of CCP repression and its failure to adhere to its obligations under the international human rights law. On the contrary, for the last 70 years the CCP has perpetuated severe violations of human rights of Tibetans inside Tibet.

“The Communist Party of China or the Chinese government is celebrating the centenary with much fanfare and a sense of achievement. However, the fact is that there is hardly anything to celebrate for anyone, including the common Chinese people, other than that China has become an economic and military superpower,” remarked DIIR Secretary Karma Choeying. “Rampant human rights violations, rising aggressive nationalism (wolf warrior diplomacy), assertiveness vis-a-vis territorial disputes, crackdowns on NGOs, censorship of domestic and international media, and political repression remains as a knot of tension within China, and between China and the rest of the world. Being one of the most populous nations with a foundation of rich cultural civilization, and now one of the foremost economic superpowers, the Chinese leadership needs to seriously revisit its hardline and unrealistic posture and instead be a responsible world leader,” Secretary Karma Choeying stated further.

Earlier this year, the Central Tibetan Administration’s UN, EU & Human Rights Desk, under the Department of Information and International Relations, released “Five Pressing Human Rights Violations in Tibet: A year in Review 2020”, a 6-minute video that highlighted the gravest human rights violations in Tibet in the year 2020.

Coinciding with the ongoing 47th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, seven more videos are released today, which are translated versions of the 2020 Five Pressing Human Rights Violations in Tibet in seven additional languages viz. Tibetan, Hindi, Chinese, Nepali, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. These shorts videos can be viewed on TibetTV Youtube channel and social media handles.

“With the videos made in various languages, we hope that a wider audience of the international community will get to know about the human rights situation in Tibet, the atrocities perpetrated against the Tibetans for their very identity of being a Tibetan, which happened last year, and continues to take place in Tibet under the Chinese government,” said Dukthen Kyi, Head of UN, EU & Human Rights Desk.

China, which is ironically the most recent member of the UN Human Rights Council, is identified as one of the worst abusers of rights in the world. Tibet was named the least-free country in the world in 2020, tying the rank with Syria.

– Filed by UN, EU & Human Rights Desk/DIIR