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DHARAMSHALA, July
22: The leading rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) in their latest
report, ‘Detention and Prosecution of Tibetans under China’s Stability
Maintenance Campaign’, reported that the authorities’ tolerance towards any
forms of expression and assembly have diminished under the stability
maintenance policy.
The report, which recorded Chinese detention, prosecution, and conviction
of Tibetans for peaceful activities from 2013 to 2015, stated that there
has been an increase in ‘state control over daily life’, ‘increasing
criminalization of nonviolent forms of protest’, and ‘disproportionate
responses to local protests’.
“These measures, part of a policy known as weiwen (stability maintenance),
have led authorities to expand the range of activities and issues targeted
for repression in Tibetan areas, particularly in the countryside,” the
report stated.
The analysis report is based on the assessment of 479 cases of Tibetans
either detained or tried from 2013 to 2015 for political offences, which
include political expression or criticism of government policy. The
assessment also comprises of cases as young as 11-years old currently in
prison.
The report also highlighted the shift of epicenter of detentions from
Sichuan province to Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). It also stated that
majority of those arrested and tried were community and religious leaders,
activists, writers, singers and villagers involved in social and cultural
activities.
“Almost all the protests and detentions identified in this report occurred
in small towns or rural townships and villages rather than in cities, where
most protests and detentions in prior years were reported to have taken
place. This suggests that dissent has increased in rural Tibetan areas,
where nearly 80 percent of Tibetans live,” the rights group said in their
report.
It also showed an increased presence of Chinese officials in the rural
areas of TAR since 2011 including over 21,000 officials deployed in the
villages and monasteries in the TAR region alone.
With stability maintenance policy in its third phase in TAR, HRW also
stated that politicized detentions in Eastern Tibet (Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu,
and Yunnan provinces) has direct link with the policy. However, it is most
aimed at ‘stopping self-immolations by Tibetans’ in these regions.
“The failure of the central government and local authorities to end these
abusive policies and roll back intrusive security and surveillance measures
raises the prospect of an intensified cycle of repression and resistance in
a region already enduring extraordinary restrictions on basic human
rights,” the report said.
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