DHARAMSHALA, June 7: China’s representative at the ongoing United Nations Human Rights Council session termed a mass students’ protest in the Chabcha region of eastern Tibet last year, in which many students were hospitalised, as an “illegal” act requiring prior permission according to Chinese law.
China’s statement came on June 3 in response to a joint communication on arbitrary detentions and rights to freedom of peaceful assembly issued by the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteurs.
The UN Human Rights Council is holding its 23rd regular session from May 27 to June 14 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
The Chinese representative further added that any form of demonstration perceived as harmful to the interests of the state, society or community by the Chinese authority will not be permitted.
On November 26, 2012, over a thousand Tibetan students from the Chabcha Sorig Lobling School staged a major protest rally against the Chinese government, raising slogans calling for freedom, equality of nationalities, freedom of language, respect for truth, and re-establishment of governance.
Chinese armed forces used violent force to break up the demonstration, injuring many young protesters and hospitalizing around 20 students. The school was subsequently placed under complete lock down and Chinese security forces barred students from meeting their parents and relatives.
The protest were triggered after local Chinese authorities distributed a ten-point political questionnaire to the students, critical of the self-immolation protests in Tibet and gave “patriotic education” sessions that contained disparaging remarks against His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The Dharamshala based Central Tibetan Administration in a release Wednesday argued that Article IV of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China stipulates that people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs.
“It is therefore incomprehensible that when Tibetan students protest to protect their constitutional rights, their actions are labelled ‘illegal’ while, at the same time, China illegally reconfigures its own constitutional authority in order to suit a particular definition of national security,” the exile Tibetan administration said.
“It is widely known that China’s inability to redress grievances expressed by Chinese students in 1989 led to an outpouring of resentment that was brutally suppressed on June 4th 1989 in Tiananmen Square. This same suppression has been perpetrated and repeated inside Tibet since its occupation.”
