Shubhajit Roy| Indian Express| 29 June 2020| Read original news here
President of Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) Lobsang Sangay has “strongly urged” the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and its member-countries to hold a special session to evaluate “human rights violations” being carried out by China.
This comes days after 50 UN independent experts called on the UNHRC to “act with a sense of urgency” to protect fundamental freedoms in regions under China, including Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.
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In a statement, Sangay said the CTA and Tibetans – both in and outside Tibet – would like to thank the UN experts for their timely intervention and welcome their call for urgent decisive measures against the Chinese government.
In the last six decades and more, Tibetans within Tibet are suffering under the “authoritarian rule” of Beijing, he said.
Sangay said the Chinese government has stripped Tibetans of their basic human rights guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, annihilating the distinct identity of Tibetans and denying them their inherent dignity of being human. The tortures, enforced disappearances, and destruction of monasteries carried out by Beijing against Tibetans are acts of crimes against humanity and do not fall short of being categorized as “cultural genocide”, he said.
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The persecution and suppression through hi-tech surveillance by China have forced 154 Tibetans from different walks of life in Tibet to self-immolate as a mark of peaceful protest against the Chinese authorities since 2009, he said.
Sangay said: “The unchecked, systemic, and egregious violations by the government of China with impunity in Tibet has emboldened it to carry out similar violations in Xinjiang and now Hong Kong. It is time to hold China accountable, otherwise it will have an adverse global impact as evidenced by the Wuhan-originated Covid-19 pandemic.
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“As rightly noted by the UN experts, the violations by China are threatening world peace and security, leading to human rights emergencies across the globe.”
The CTA and Tibetans support the call of the UN experts on the UNHRC to take urgent measures against Chinese human rights violations, he said.