A paramilitary policeman stands guard in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet
Credit: REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo
China has deployed a mass labour transfer programme in Tibet, pushing rural workers into factories after putting them through centralised “military-style” vocational training to reform their “backward thinking,” a new report claims.
The programme mirrors a similar one in Xinjiang, another region in China home to ethnic minorities suppressed by the government, that human rights groups say forces people to work against their will.
More than half a million rural workers – 15 per cent of Tibet’s population – have been trained via this programme in the first seven months of the year, according to findings by independent researcher Adrian Zenz, who published a report Tuesday with the Jamestown Foundation, a DC-based research institute.
Rural workers have also been encouraged to transfer their animal herds and land to state-controlled collectives, cutting Tibetans off from their traditional forms of livelihood – nomadism and farming – and instead turning them into wage labourers.
“This is now, in my opinion, the strongest, most clear and targeted attack on traditional Tibetan livelihoods that we have seen almost since the Cultural Revolution,” Mr Zenz told Reuters, which corroborated his findings and found additional policy documents and state media reports that described the program.
People line up at a 'vocational skills centre' in China's Xinjiang
Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File
“There are clear elements of coercion during recruitment, training and job matching, as well as a centralized and strongly state-administered and supervised transfer process,” wrote Mr Zenz in the report.
“While some documents assert that the scheme is predicated on voluntary participation, the overall evidence indicates the systemic presence of numerous coercive elements.”
The programme is aimed at achieving Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s goal of eradicating poverty by the end of this year. Poverty alleviation reports say China must “stop raising up lazy people,” and that “strict military-style management” is necessary as it “strengthens [the Tibetans’] weak work discipline.”
“In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage,” wrote Mr Zenz.
At the moment, Mr Zenz also wrote that there was no evidence that the labour programme was linked to “extrajudicial internment,” as has occurred in Xinjiang region, home to ethnic Muslim minorities, where millions are estimated to be held in chilling detention camps.
Chinese authorities have denied the existence of forced labour in Tibet. It is difficult to independently ascertain the condition of the workers, as the Chinese government tightly controls access to Tibet Autonomous Region.
Foreign journalists are not permitted to enter the region, and other foreign citizens are only allowed on government-approved tours.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has long sought to bring the remote, mainly-Buddhist Tibet region under its control. Beijing claims sovereignty over Tibet, though Tibetans have long said the region was historically independent, and should be allowed to regain independence.
After a failed anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama fled the region and set up a government-in-exile in India. In the years since, many Tibetans are believed to have been killed in repression as Chinese authorities view the Dalai Lama – and his followers in Tibet – as a separatist threat.
Chinese state suppression of Tibetans has spread around the world. Last year, suspicions mounted that the Chinese government was linked to the immediate backlash against a Tibetan activist elected as student president at a university in Canada.
On Monday, a New York City police officer was arrested on charges he was secretly working as an agent of the Chinese government and reporting to consular officials the activities of Tibetan immigrants in the US.
Baimadajie Angwang, an ethnic Tibetan and naturalised American born in China, had for years been reporting back to “handlers” in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), according to a criminal complaint filed at a New York federal court.
According to the charging documents filed on Monday, Mr Angwang also assessed potential Tibetan intelligence sources, and used his position in the New York Police Department (NYPD) to pass along information about its internal workings to the Chinese.
“The investigation has revealed that Angwang had used his official position in the NYPD to provide consulate officials access to senior (police) officials through invitations to official NYPD events,” the complaint said.
Since June 2018, the FBI said Mr Angwang, also a member of the US Marine Corps Reserve, had been "in frequent communication" with an unidentified Chinese consular official he referred to as "Boss."
That same year, he was awarded "Officer of the Month" by the NYPD for his initiative and public service.
Mr Angwang, who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and holds a secret-level security clearance, was reportedly tasked with “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of the PRC.”
Despite his family being Tibetan, a minority group long oppressed and occupied by Beijing, the FBI claims in the complaint that Mr Angwang’s affiliations with the Chinese government ran deep. His father is a retired member of the People’s Liberation Army, while his mother is a retired government official and a member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
He initially travelled to the US on a cultural exchange visa. He overstayed a second visa and eventually claimed asylum on the grounds he had been arrested and tortured in China, due partly to his Tibetan ethnicity.
In a detention memo filed on Monday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, said: “Angwang has travelled back to the PRC on numerous occasions since his asylum application was granted.”
“These are not the actions of an individual who fears torture or persecution at the hands of the PRC, thus showing that his US citizenship was secured through false pretenses.”
Prosecutors asked a judge to deny bail because Mr Angwang “presents a serious risk of flight” and is facing criminal charges which hold a maximum possible prison sentence of 55 years.
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