Survival Under Surveillance: Tibet 1994-1995

ISSUED BY: Human Rights Desk, Department of Information and International Relations, Tibetan Government-in-Exile (Dharamsala, India)

Survival Under Surveillance: A Brief Overview of the Human Rights Situation in Tibet,1994-1995 (con't)

A. Population Transfer: The Final Solution ?

1. An Overview of Chinese Population Transfer in Tibet

In the past few years, the Chinese government has been concentrating on settling more and more People's Liberation Army troops (hereinafter referred to as PLA) and administrators into Tibet to gain more political control in a country where political activism against occupation is on the rise. Today new recruits joining the 300,000-strong PLA occupation force are expected to settle permanently in Tibet and in 1995 the PLA military headquarters were moved from Chengdu to Lhasa. China has created another channel to transfer Chinese into Tibet: internationally-funded development projects are now the vehicles for Chinese migration.

On May 12, 1993 a top secret meeting was held in Chengdu to work out strategies to solve the problem of Tibet. According to the leaked report of the meeting, the strategy adopted was to flood Tibet with more Chinese settlers. Reports in the Hong Kong press in May 1994 suggested that leading figures in Beijing have been pushing for the rapid development of the TAR with a massive programme of preferential policies aimed at attracting more Chinese settlers. Then in 1994 the authorities in Tibet publicly outlined their population transfer policy at the Third Work Forum on Tibet held in Beijing in July 1994 where it was officially stated that former soldiers, paramilitary troops, cadres, technicians and entrepeneurs were to be encouraged to move to Tibet through incentives provided by the central government in Beijing, such as preferential employment and housing. It was also stated that permanent settlement would be encouraged.

Ever since the 1949/1950 invasion, China has been illegally occupying Tibet and using this occupation to transfer its population into the areas of Tibet known as Kham (Chinese: Chinese provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan) and Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai province). What China refers to as Tibet, refers only to what has been redefined as the Tibet Autonomous Region ("TAR") and incorporates the region of U-Tsang. The regions of Amdo and Kham, are now annexed to "China". This is significant because the Chinese claim that the annexed territory is not Tibet, so according to their logic they are not transferring their population to Tibet (Refer to the map of Tibet provided).

The Chinese government has always denied a policy of population transfer and justified the high numbers of Chinese settlers in Tibet by claiming that Tibetans are "backward" and need specialists from China to advance Tibet's economy. Evidence collected from our sources in Tibet confirms that population transfer only serves the economic interests of the Chinese government and its citizens. Chinese population transfer leads to direct discrimination against Tibetans. Chinese settle in Tibet because they are attracted by economic incentives which the Chinese government offers to the detriment of Tibetans.

International development projects initiated by China to support their population transfer results in direct and indirect discrimination against Tibetans today. Two major international development assistance projects in Tibet have been criticised and one postponed due to complaints related to the discrimination and exclusion of Tibetans living in the area. The Panam Integrated Rural Development Project, to have been funded by the European Union and designed to create the "wheat granary " of Tibet, was postponed in 1994 and the UN World Food Programme Project "3357" in the Lhasa river valley is criticised for disadvantaging Tibetan farmers and encouraging and benefiting Chinese settlers in the area.

Reports Received in the Past Two Years of Chinese Population Transfer in Tibet:

The Human Rights Desk reported on June 14, 1995 that the Chinese authorities planned to settle 5,000 Chinese families in Thartso district, Tsongon, Amdo sometime in 1995. The population of Tsongon until 1995 was four million Chinese and 970,000 Tibetans.
At the end of 1993 a secret decision was made by the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCCP) that from 1994 all new Chinese military recruits to Tibet would have to transfer their household registration to their place of posting. The aim is to facilitate demobilised soldiers to permanently settle in Tibet.
The Chinese authorities announced on February 25, 1995 that 1,000 "outstanding leading officials and technicians" from China were to be sent to the Tibet Autonomous Region.
On June 23, 1995 a three-day training class was convened in Beijing for cadres of central and state organs bound for Lhasa on June 26. The work of dispatching selected cadres from China to Tibet was reported to be nearly completed with some 500 cadres having already arrived in Tibet.
In December 1994 it was announced that students would also be added to the list of Chinese migrants and in 1995 100 college graduates from China moved to Tibet after being guaranteed employment in Tibet. Four hundred students applied for the 100 posts in the TAR after attending China's first "nationwide job fair" held in Xian, Shaanxi province in December 1994.
VOA (Voice of America) reported on July 6, 1995 that a group of about 30 Chinese administrators had arrived in Ngari region (Western Tibet) to fill administrative posts.
On April 22, 1995 Xinhua News Agency reported that nearly 2,000 officials in eastern China's Xhejiang province have applied to work in the Tibet Autonomous Region. A total of 1,970 officials sent applications to Xhejiang Communist Party Committee to compete for 45 jobs in Tibet.
At the Sixth People's Political Consultative Conference — Third General Body Meeting in Lhasa, the secretariat held from May 16 - 22 1995 stated that: "Moreover in Gansu and from Tso-ngon province to the districts to the west of Nagchu in central Tibet there are over 12,000 [Chinese] gold miners".
Construction of the mammoth Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze river in China has put pressure on the population growth in the region. Critics such as Human Rights Watch Asia warn that the 1.3 million Chinese people who will be displaced by the Three Gorges Dam Project will be moved to distant higher areas (like Tibet and Xinjiang province) and they may be transferred to new jobs in the new areas.
The US$17.5 million U.N. World Food Programme's Project #3357 in the Lhasa valley was supposedly designed to increase agricultural productivity. It is estimated that this project alone has attracted more than 130,000 Chinese to migrate to central Tibet and today most of them are permanently settled.

Chinese population transfer to Tibet merely serves to strengthen China's claim that Tibet is an inalienable part of China and further reduces Tibetan people to a minority in their own country. Chinese population transfer directly discriminates against Tibetans in that Tibetans are deliberately excluded by the Chinese authorities from economic development policies and internationally-funded development projects in Tibet.

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