By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, November 29: Chinese government said Sunday it had helped moved some 6000 Tibetan herders from 1300 nomadic families in Shangri-la (Tib: Gyalthang) County of Deqen (Tib: Dechen) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province into fixed settlement homes under a government-led program, Chinese state-controlled news media reported, a controversial practice rights groups say has been marked by gross abuses.
The so-called ‘Shangri-la’ County had constructed 2,135 sets of dwelling houses over the period of 2009-2010, reported China’s online Tibet news service.
The report said that 111,780,900 yuan will be spent to move 6,000 Tibetan nomadic herders of 1,300 families to move into new fixed settlement houses within this year.
Traditionally known to Tibetans as Gyalthang, the county was formerly named Zongdian County by Chinese government. In 2001 Chinese authorities renamed the county after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area.
The Chinese policy of resettling Tibetan nomads and herders into so-called “modern way of living” in permanent concrete houses has raised concerns from rights groups and Tibet observers.
Tibet observers and, Chinese and foreign ecologists say resettlement could exacerbate poverty and family breakdowns, and land erosion from intensive grazing by fenced-in animals.
In 2006, the Chinese government started a five-year housing project aimed at resettling farmers and nomadic herders in the Tibetan nomadic areas into “permanent brick homes”. Once finished, Chinese state media reported at the time, it would mean housing for 80 percent of the region’s farmers and herders by the end of 2010.
China calls the project the “comfortable housing program,” and its stated aim is to present a more modern face for Tibet, which China has controlled since 1950 after sending troops to occupy the region.
It claims that the new housing on main roads, sometimes only a mile from previous homes, will enable small farmers and herders to have access to schools and jobs, as well as for the sake of ecological conservation and for the health of the farmers and herders.
Saying Tibet has been experiencing double-digit economic growth over the years, China claims Tibetan farmers and herds people are the “beneficiaries of the economic development under China”.
Independent reports, however, show otherwise.
China’s broader aim seems to be remaking Tibet – a region with its own culture, language and religious traditions – in order to have firmer political control over its population.
Forceful resettlement of nomadic Tibetans in the so-called ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’ (TAR) and in adjacent ethnic Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, and now Yunnan, actually began way back in 2000 and have taken place more intensively since 2003.
Observers say the massive mass relocation is linked to Beijing’s effort, launched in 1999, to develop China’s poor, restive west and bind it to the bustling east. Since then, human rights groups say, China has also been forcing nomadic Tibetan herders to settle in towns to clear land for development, while leaving many unable to earn living.
To prepare for an influx of millions of tourists in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the resettlement drive was more vigorously implemented across the Tibetan plateau.
Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Chinese state media reported of increasing relocation of nomadic herdsmen in Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) into fixed residences, but said they were done so to help protect the environment and boost their living standards.
Between 2006 and 2007 alone, Chinese government relocated some 250,000 Tibetan farmers and herders, nearly one-tenth of the population, to resettle to new “socialist villages” from scattered rural hamlets. Reports show they were often ordered to build new housing largely at their own expense and without their consent.
In doing so, these Tibetan nomads have been forced to abandon their traditional lifestyles with many driven to frustration and despair, unable to cope up with the pressures of earning their livelihood through means alien to their traditions and upbringing.
Also resettlement often involve the slaughter of animals belonging to the mostly nomadic herders, relocation to poorly built accommodation and inability to find work due to lack of skills, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said its June 2007 report.
Others are forcibly evicted to make room for public works projects, like dams and roads, the group said in the report.
China says its presence in Tibet has resulted in modernization of the predominantly Buddhist Himalayan country.
Critics rubbish the claim and say modernisation in Tibet has been crushingly imposed by the Chinese authorities along with draconian measures that restrict freedom of expression, freedom to follow a religion of choice and curtailment of opportunity.
While pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into road-building and development projects in Tibet, China is maintaining a large military presence and keeping close tabs on the citizenry through a vast security apparatus of cameras and informants on urban streets and in the monasteries to contain its tight grip on the restive Himalayan region and to quell any impending demonstrations, like the one that broke out in March 2008 against its rule.
