BEIJING (Reuters) – China is expelling an increasing number of rural Tibetans from the earth and into newly built military-style schools, where they become factoryArrays that reflect a program in western Xinjiang that human rights teams have called coercive work.
Beijing has set quotas for the large relocation of rural personnel to Tibet and other parts of China, according to more than 100 state media reports, policy documents from government offices in Tibet, and procurement requests published between 2016-2020 and reviewed through from Reuters. The quota effort marks an immediate expansion of an initiative designed to supply unwavering personnel to Chinese industry.
A report published in the Tibet Regional Government last month indicated that more than one million more people had been trained in the task in the first seven months of 2020, approximately 15% of the region’s population. Of this total, only about 50,000 were transferred to jobs in Tibet and several thousand were sent to other parts of China. Many end up in underpaid jobs, adding textile manufacturing, structure and agriculture.
“This is now, in my opinion, the strongest, clearest and highest targeted attack on classical Tibetan livelihoods that we have noticed to the fullest since the Cultural Revolution” from 1966 to 1976, said Adrian Zenz, independent researcher on Tibet and Xinjiang, who compiled the main findings of the program, which are detailed in a report published this week through the Jamestown Foundation , an institute in Washington, D. C. , that focuses on political issues of strategic importance to the United States.
Reuters corroborated Zenz’s findings and discovered more policy documents, corporate reports, procurement records, and state media reports describing the program.
In a report to Reuters, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs flatly denied the participation of forced labour, saying that China was a country of law and that staff were voluntary and well-paid.
“What those hidden motives call ‘forced labour’ simply exists. We hope that the foreign network will distinguish good from evil, respect the facts and be fooled by lies,” he said.
The transfer of surplus rural labor to industry is a key detail of China’s drive to stimulate the economy and reduce poverty, but in spaces like Xinjiang and Tibet, with giant ethnic populations and a history of unrest, rights teams say ideological training systems. And government quotas and military-style management, they say, recommend that movements have coercive details.
China took Tibet after Chinese troops entered the region in 1950, in what Beijing calls a “peaceful liberation. “Since then, Tibet has become one of the most limited and delicate spaces in the country.
The Tibetan program is developing as foreign tension in similar projects in Xinjiang increases, some of which have been connected to mass detention centres. A United Nations report has estimated that around one million people in Xinjiang, more commonly Uighurs, have been detained in camps. subjected to ideological education. China, first of all, denied the lifestyle of the camps, but has since said that they were vocational training and training centres and that everyone had “graduated”.
Reuters may simply not be the situation of transferred Tibetan workers. Foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the region and other foreign citizens are only allowed to participate in government-approved tours.
In recent years, Xinjiang and Tibet have been the target of difficult policies for what the Chinese government calls “maintaining stability. “These policies are broadly aimed at quelling dissent, unrest or separatism and come with restricting ethnic citizens to other parts of China and abroad, and strengthening control over devout activities.
In August, President Xi Jinping said China would once again step up its efforts to support separatism in Tibet, where ethnic Tibetans make up about 90% of the population, according to census data. The Chinese government to perpetrate a “cultural genocide” in the region. The 85-year-old Nobel laureate has been in Dharamsala, India, since he fled China in 1959 following a failed uprising backed by the Chinese government.
DELETE “LAZY PEOPLE”
Although there has been evidence of military-style work transfers and education in Tibet in the past, this expanded new programme represents the first large-scale program and the first to brazenly identify quotas for transfers outside the region’s gates.
A key element, described in several regional policy documents, is to send officials to villages and municipalities to gather knowledge about rural areas and carry out educational activities aimed at retaining.
State media reported such an operation in villages near the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The leaders held more than a thousand school sessions against separatism, according to the state media report, “allowing others from all ethnic teams to feel the attention and fear of the Party Central Committee,” referring to China’s ruling Communist Party.
The report states that the songs, dances and sketches included in “an easy-to-understand language”. These “education” paintings were positioned before the release of this year’s largest transfers.
The style is Xinjiang’s, and researchers say a key link between the two is former Tibetan Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who took over the same position in Xinjiang in 2016 and led the progression of the Xinjiang camp system. , where Chen remains the party leader, did not respond to a request for comment.
“In Tibet, it was a level of decline, under the radar, editing what was implemented in Xinjiang,” said Allen Carlson, associate professor of the government branch of Cornell University.
About 70% of Tibet’s population is classified as rural, according to 2018 figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, including a giant proportion of subsistence farmers, posing a challenge to China’s poverty alleviation program, which measures its good fortune based on key sources China is committed to eliminating rural poverty in the country until the end of 2020.
“In order to cope with the increasing downward economic pressure on the employment of rural painters, we will now increase the intensity of precision vocational training . . . and we will make transfers of organized and large-scale tasks between provinces, regions and cities,” said a painting plan published through Tibet’s Department of Human Resources and Social Security in July. The plan envisaged 2020 quotas for the program in areas.
Some of the policy documents and state media reports reviewed through Reuters refer to uns specified penalties for those who do not meet their quotas. An implementation plan at the prefecture point required “strict measures of praise and punishment” for Array
As in Xinjiang, personal intermediaries, such as agents and companies, who organize transfers can obtain subsidies set at 500 yuan ($74) for employees moving out of the region and three hundred yuan ($44) for those placed in Tibet, depending on the situation. regions and perform at the prefectural level.
In the past, officials have stated that labour transfer systems elsewhere in China are voluntary, and many Tibetan government documents also mention mechanisms that guarantee certain staff rights but do not provide details. to be able to reject internships, they recognize that some would possibly volunteer.
“These recent announcements hugely and damagingly expand these programs, ‘reflection training’ with government coordination, and constitute a damaging escalation,” said Matteo Mecacci, president of the U. S. -based advocacy group, the International Campaign for Tibet.
Government documents reviewed through Reuters place a strong emphasis on ideological education for the “thought concepts” of workers of the right type. “There is a statement that minorities are undisciplined, that their minds want to change, that they want to be convinced to participate,” said Zenz, the Minnesota-founded Tibet-Xinjiang researcher.
A policy paper, published on the government’s online page in the city of Nagqu in eastern Tibet in December 2018, shows the initial objectives of the plan and highlights the approach. He describes how officials went to villages to gather knowledge about 57,800 workers. adopt “I can’t do, I don’t need to do and I dare not do” attitudes about work, the document says. Requests uns specified measures to “effectively ‘vague'”.
A report published in January through the Tibetan branch of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a high-level government advisory body, describes internal discussions on ways to combat the “mental poverty” of rural workers, adding public officials to villages. “guide the masses” to create a fulfilling life with their working hands.
MILITARY EXERCISES AND UNIFORMS
Rural staff transferred to vocational education centers get an ideological education – what China calls “military style” education – according to several Tibetan political documents at the regional and district point describing the program at maturity 2019 and 2020. Education emphasizes strict discipline, and participants must conduct military training and wear uniforms.
It is known how many participants in the labor movement program get such military-style training, but policy papers from Ngari, Xigatze and Shannan, three districts that make up about a third of the Tibetan population, require a “vigorous promotion of training style. “Regional policy reviews also refer to this training approach.
Small-scale versions of military-style educational projects have been underway in the region for more than a decade, yet the structure of new services increased sharply in 2016, and recent policy documents call for more investment in those sites. . and documents related to more than a dozen settlements in other districts of Tibet show that some are being built near or within existing professional centers.
Policy documents describe a school program that combines skill schooling, legal schooling, and “schooling of gratitude,” designed for party loyalty.
James Liebold, a professor at La Trobe University in Australia, who specializes in Tibet and Xinjiang, says there are other military-style training degrees, some less restrictive than others, but that the emphasis is on compliance.
“Tibetans are lazy, backward, slow or dirty, so what they have to do is make them walk at the same pace. It’s a big component of that kind of military-style education. “
In the Chamdo district of eastern Tibet, where some of the army-style exercise systems were launched, photographs from the 2016 state media show personnel covered in army lattice exercises. In a professional facility in the same district. Photos posted online through Chamdo Golden Sunshine School of Vocational Training show rows of fundamental housing in the form of a white shed with blue ceilings. In an image, banners hung on the wall of a Moving Assignment is monitored through the local branch of human resources and social security.
Professional skills acquired through apprentices come with textiles, construction, agriculture and ethnic craftsmanship. A vocational center describes the educational elements, adding “Mandarin language, legal education and political education”. An independent regional policy document states that the objective is “gradually the transition from ‘I have to work’ to ‘I need to work’.
Regional and prefectural policy documents on educational personnel for express companies or projects. Defense teams say this on-demand technique increases the likelihood of systems being coercive.
SUPPLY CHAIN
Workers transferred under systems can be difficult to track, especially those sent to other parts of China. In similar mass transfers from Xinjiang Uighurs, staff were discovered in the chains of origin of 83 global brands, according to a report published through the Australian Institute of Strategic Policy (ASPI).
Researchers and defense teams say transfers from those regions pose a challenge because without access they cannot assess whether the practice constitutes forced labour and staff paintings transferred to their non-transferred counterparts.
In July, Tibetan state media reported that until 2020, some of those transferred out of Tibet had been sent to structure projects in Qinghai and Sichuan, while others transferred to Tibet received training in textiles, safety and agricultural production.
Tibetan regional government policy announcements and prefectural implementation plans provide local government offices with quotas by 2020, adding for Tibetans sent to other parts of China Larger districts are expected to supply more to other parts of the country: 1,000 from Lhasa Country, the capital, 1,400 from Xigaze and 800 from Shannan.
Reuters has examined policy notices issued through Tibet and a dozen other provinces that have accepted Tibetan personnel. These documents reveal that staff are moved into teams and housed in collective homes.
Local government documents in Tibet and 3 other provinces imply that they remain in centralized housing after being moved, separated from others and under supervision. A state media document, describing a move to the area, called it a peer-to-peer “babysitting service. “
The Tibetan Department of Human Resources and Social Security noted in July that others were grouped into groups of 10 to 30 more people, with team leaders and controlled through ”labor liaison services”. The branch said the groups are tightly controlled, especially when they go outside Tibet, where liaison officers are tasked with conducting “continuous school activities and cutting off the country’s evil complexes. “He said the government is guilty of dealing with “women, young people and the elderly who have been left behind. “
(report via Cate Cadell; edited through Janet McBride)
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