By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, January 18: The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday said that Chinese authorities have ‘indefinitely extended an intensive surveillance program in villages across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)’ that was due to end in 2014.
Sophie Richardson, China Director, HRW, said that China’s surveillance scheme openly and massively infringes upon the basic rights of Tibetans protected under Chinese and international law. “The Chinese government’s decision to extend its Tibet surveillance program indefinitely is nothing less than a continuous human rights violation,” said Richardson.
“In TAR, where the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, religion and privacy are already highly restricted, the extension of this scheme signals authorities’ intention to suppress any signs of dissent or criticism among Tibetans,” the HRW said in a latest report.
According to separate official reports, construction plans for TAR villages indicate that the scheme is intended to be permanent. It also states that between 2014 and 2015, the TAR government constructed 20,092 new buildings for office or residential use by cadres working in villages and townships. 12,008 more buildings are due to be built by the end of this year.
As part of the three-year campaign over 5,000 teams comprising of around 21,000 communist party cadres were stationed in Tibetan villages to ‘improve rural living standards.’ However, the scheme, HRW alleges, has turned every village into a ‘fortress’ in ‘the struggle against separatism’ by setting up new Communist Party organizations in each village and carrying out political and educational propagandas.
The report also stated that the village-based teams also engage in ‘cultural activities’ such as building meeting halls and reading rooms for the dissemination of officially approved literature, films and theatrical performances aimed at inculcating ‘core socialist values’ and discouraging ‘bad old traditions’.
