US-based Tibet advocate groups are calling on the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press Beijing on Tibet as her maiden visit to China, starting Friday, comes in the wake of an intensified military clampdown in the restive Himalayan region.
Dharamsala, Feb. 20: New York Tibet advocacy groups are calling on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to increase American pressure on the Chinese government to stop its military clampdown in Tibet as she begins her visit to the communist state today.
Clinton wrapped up her two-day visit to South Korea and left for Beijing on Friday.
Her visit comes just days after a protest by hundreds of Tibetans in eastern Tibet and as Chinese authorities are mobilizing military forces across the Tibetan plateau in advance of the Tibetan New Year on February 25th and the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan National Uprising on March 10th, New York-based Tibet advocacy organizations said in a joint statement issued on Thursday.
“Secretary Clinton arrives in China as the Chinese government is dramatically escalating its aggression against the Tibetan people,” Tenzin Dorjee, Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet based in the region, said in the statement.
“Clinton and many American leaders have made strong statements in support of Tibet, and it is time they matched their words with action by prioritizing a negotiated resolution between China and the Dalai Lama as an integral part of US-China relations,” Tenzin, who, along with two other Tibetan independence activists, staged a dramatic anti-China demonstration at Mount Everest’s main base camp in Tibet in 2007 to protest China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics, said in the statement.
Chinese authorities detained them after they unfurled a banner reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” and “Free Tibet”. They were later released.
Chinese authorities are already tightening restrictions to ban foreigners from entering Tibet Autonomous Region and remaining Tibetan areas incorporated into neighbouring Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces ahead of the tense 50th anniversary of an anti-Chinese uprising.
China has ordered government and security forces in Tibet to crush any signs of support for the Dalai Lama, state media has said. The warning also comes amid a widespread movement to boycott festivities during the coming Tibetan New Year next week. The movement aims to use the occasion as a silent protest to mourn Tibetans who were killed during the government crackdown last March and express concern for those arrested or tortured.
Large-scale troop build up has already been reported in several areas.
“Chinese forces are setting the stage for the bloody suppression of Tibetans to take place out of sight of independent eye-witnesses by barring foreigners from Tibet and making it impossible for reporters to access the area,” said Kate Woznow, Campaigns Director of SFT.
“We are gravely concerned that in the coming weeks more Tibetans will be arrested and possibly killed; and we call on Secretary Clinton to unequivocally convey to the Chinese leadership that its hard-line policies must end.”
Chinese security forces on Sunday and Monday swiftly broke up the protests in Lithang, in Sichuan province. At least 21 people were detained and troops were reportedly searching for others who might have joined in the demonstrations in which protesters shouted slogans calling for Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet and demanded “independence for Tibet.”
London-based activist group Free Tibet said the protests were the largest across the Tibetan plateau since massive unrest last spring, which, according to exile Tibetan groups, left at least more than 200 demonstrators dead and more than a 1000 missing in the subsequent Chinese military crackdown.
Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy Friday said Lithang was virtually under intense military “siege” following the protests.
“Hundreds of People’s Armed Police (PAP) -a paramilitary force- in full combat gears has arrived in Lithang County in the past couple of days,” the centre quoted sources as saying today.
“Severe restrictions are being put on the movement of the people in Lithang,” sources said.
Sources told TCHRD that people from villages and monasteries were told not to move out of their houses and were warned of serious consequences if they come out in the street.
Last week, a group of prominent organizations, mostly based in US, issued a joint press statement asking Mrs Clinton to put Human Rights and Tibet, among others, on top of the agenda in her visit to Beijing this week.
“If Secretary Clinton remains silent on these issues – as the US did earlier this week during China’s review at the Human Rights Council in Geneva – the Chinese government is likely to get the wrong message,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, in the statement.
