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 Human Rights Watch has reported that the Chinese government is putting traditional Tibetan lifestyles and livelihoods at risk. This latest report highlights the violation of economic and social rights in Tibet resulting from the Chinese government’s campaign to move Tibetan herders to urban areas.
Tibetan herders are being forcibly relocated to urban areas and farmland, destroying their livelihoods and way of life. Herders are also being denied access to justice for violations of their rights.
The resettlement policy has seen approximately 700,000 people resettled within Tibetan areas since 2000 - with herders being required to slaughter their livestock and move into newly built housing colonies without consultation or compensation.
The Claimed ‘Civilisation’ Of Tibet
The Chinese government has sought to explain forced ‘resettlement’ as a necessary policy for environmental protection, and to “develop,” “civilize,” and “modernize” both these areas and the people living there. The policy has even been promoted as a way to improve “access to social and medical services”. However, the policy has the practical effect of suppressing Tibetan culture and forcibly assimilating Tibetans into Han Chinese society. On this point, one of the Tibetan’s interviewed for the report said:
“Because there are no Chinese living in the remote pastoral areas of Tibet, many of our local people believe that the policy of putting Tibetan herders in the towns is in order to control those areas, and after the older generation passes away, we will gradually be assimilated into the towns…”
Read the Human Rights Watch report “No One Has the Liberty to Refuse: Tibetan Herders Forcibly Relocated in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and the Tibet Autonomous Region”
Relocated Into Poverty
The report also documents how Tibetan herders who are forcibly resettled in urban areas are frequently unable to secure anything other than temporary or menial labor, often as a result of their inability to speak Chinese as well as their lack of capital to start small businesses.
Amongst the report’s findings, Human Rights Watch called on the Chinese government to impose a moratorium on all resettlements until it establishes an effective mechanism to review the resettlement policy and its negative impact on the rights of herders. “Chinese officials claim to be promoting economic development and protecting the environment, but it is hard to see those goals actually being achieved or benefiting Tibetan herders,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “If the Chinese government won’t review this policy, its justifications have to be called into question.”
Examples of testimony from Tibetans interviewed for the report:
“They are destroying our Tibetan [herder] communities by not letting us live in our area and thus wiping out our livelihood completely, making it difficult for us to survive in this world, as we have been [herders] for generations. The Chinese are not letting us carry on our occupation and forcing us to live in Chinese-built towns, which will leave us with no livestock and we won’t be able to do any other work, so we will surely be beggars.”
—F.R., Tibetan from Machen (Maqin), Qinghai province, November 2004
“Because there are no Chinese living in the remote pastoral areas of Tibet, many of our local people believe that the policy of putting Tibetan herders in the towns is in order to control those areas, and after the older generation passes away, we will gradually be assimilated into the towns…”
—A.M., Tibetan from Machen county, Qinghai Province, September 2005
Read the Human Rights Watch report “No One Has the Liberty to Refuse: Tibetan Herders Forcibly Relocated in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and the Tibet Autonomous Region” |
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