By Tenzin Tsetan
DHARAMSHALA, Dec. 01: China has extended its intrusive surveillance program in Tibet with the appointment of its sixth batch of the village cadre teams at a conference meeting held last week in Lhasa.
The meeting saw recognition and awards being given to cadres of fifth batch village-based cadres for their ‘outstanding achievement’ in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and also introduced the sixth batch of village based cadre teams. The meeting boasts of the achievements of implementation of the village based cadre completing thousands of projects for economic development, poverty alleviation, skills training etc.
The mobilization of the sixth batch of village-based cadres includes the appointment of 22,000 officials out of which 2408 provincial level cadres along with 55 prefecture level cadres have been selected to lead the rest. These cadres will be stationed in 5467 villages and neighborhood committees including the religious institutions in TAR.
According to TCHRD, this highly intrusive surveillance program extended for sixth year in TAR involves sending thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and govt. cadres to thousands of villages, religious institutions and neighborhood committees across TAR to monitor and survey local Tibetans, organize anti Dalai Lama themed political indoctrination campaigns, and entrench the influence of CCP in Tibet.
“This surveillance program implemented since 2011 has proven to be highly repressive and terrifyingly intrusive because it involves cadres acting as though police keeping a regular watch on local Tibetans. The cadres arbitrarily visit the homes of local Tibetans to gather political information and force them to attend political indoctrination sessions. Tibetans have to accommodate them or risk getting blacklisted,” said Tenzin Dawa, researcher at Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).
In 2011, China in their effort to prevent the recurrence of 2008 widespread protest on the Tibetan plateau launched a campaign called “Benefit the Masses” under which the village based cadres program was initiated. The program was due to end in 2014 but later the TAR authorities issued notice of the continuation of the program. Many reports indicate that the village-based cadres scheme is intended to be permanent.
Human rights watch (HRW) had reported that China is keeping Tibet under strict surveillance in order to prevent any possible civil protest and dissent against the party. “China’s surveillance scheme openly and massively infringe upon the basic rights of Tibetans protected under the Chinese and international law. China’s central and regional authorities should end the repressive aspects of this scheme immediately, ” said Sophie Richardson, HRW China director earlier this year.
