By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, Jan 12: A Chinese Communist official has said fight against the exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama is “meant to be lasting, intense and complicated” and the government faced “arduous task” of maintaining stability in the Tibetan region.
“The fight against the Dalai Lama clique is meant to be lasting, intense, complicated, and sometimes fought vehemently,” said Padma Choling, the Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, in his first government report submitted to the local legislature for review on Monday.
“We are still facing an arduous task to fight secessionists and maintain stability in the region,” Choling was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
The review reiterated its blame on the “secessionist forces led by the 14th Dalai Lama” for provoking the “deadly riots” in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions in March 2008.
Widespread unrest against Chinese rule broke out across Tibet in 2008, causing official embarrassment ahead of the August 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China says only 19 people died in the 2008 unrest.
However, the India-based Tibetan Government-in-Exile and rights groups claim Chinese armed troops have killed more than 200 Tibetans, injuring hundreds more and jailing several others for taking part in peaceful demonstrations, which they say were a result of “long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people under the Chinese governance”.
In the review, Choling also said the government’s goal in achieving rapid development and long-term stability in Tibet also faces challenges from lagging infrastructure construction, development gap between urban and rural areas, and lack of a system to ensure long-term growth of residents’ incomes.
In an annual Human Rights report released here today, the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) has said it took more than a decade for the Chinese government to “acknowledge” its flawed policies in Tibet.
“After a decade of the ambitious Western Development Strategy, the authorities seem to have acknowledged that the inequality between the rich and the poor has widened, social services are not uniform and the education level of the people uneven,” the centre, which monitors human rights situation in Tibet, said in its 90-page “Annual Report 2010: Human Rights Situation in Tibet”.
The Fifth Tibet Work Forum was held in Beijing from 18-20 January 2010, almost a decade since the last work forum was held. Chinese President Hu Jintao and more than 300 of China’s most senior Party, government and military leaders attended the meeting.
“In an unprecedented development, unlike previous four work forums on Tibet the Fifth included all Tibetan areas incorporated into Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces,” the report said.
The report also takes note of the restrictions and forced extradition that Tibetan nomadic herders have faced over the years. “While China claims to prioritize economic rights of its people, it has failed to employ rights based and need based approach to development in Tibet thus rendering extreme difficulties in the lives of nomads and farmers,” the report said.
The report found that there was “no let up” by the Chinese Communist government in its repressive approach in Tibet. During 2010, the centre said, it has documented at least 188 known cases of Tibetans who have been arrested and detained. Out of them, it said 71 had already been sentenced by the courts.
“As of 30 December 2010, there are 831 known political prisoners in Tibet out of which 360 are known to have been legally convicted by courts and 12 Tibetans are serving life imprisonment term,” the report added.
The report also found that since 2008, over 60 Tibetan writers, bloggers, intellectuals and cultural figures had been arrested.
In 2010 the Chinese authorities also targeted prominent Tibetan figures who were earlier looked upon as exemplary individuals, the report said.
