(TibetanReview.net, Feb20’25) – The Chinese government has increasingly imposed arbitrary restrictions on people’s internationally protected right to leave the country, especially in the case of Tibetans and Uyghurs who have, in fact, been long prohibited from obtaining passports, said New York-based Human Rights Watch in a Feb 17 report.
Apart from those they considered high risks for online fraud, Chinese authorities also require citizens from locales they broadly consider to be high risks for “unlawful” emigration to submit additional paperwork and obtain approval from multiple government offices during passport application processes. Those not meeting these cumbersome requirements are often denied passports.
Under these onerous restrictions, the Chinese government has long restricted people’s access to passports in areas where Tibetans and Uyghurs predominantly live, said the report, China: Right to Leave Country Further Restricted.
“The authorities are going beyond existing restrictions on Tibetans and Uyghurs to limit the travel of people throughout China under the guise of anti-crime campaigns.”
While China’s the Ministry of Public Security’s Entry and Exit Administration initiated in late 2002 a new “on demand” system to simplify the passport application process, applicants from Xinjiang, Tibet, and the 13 Tibetan or Hui autonomous prefectures in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces were never granted permission to use this fast-track passport application system, the report said.
In fact, applicants from these areas are required to provide far more extensive documentation in support of their passport applications than elsewhere in China and they face extremely long delays, often lasting several years, before passports are issued, or are routinely denied passports for no valid reason, the report said.
“Chinese authorities should drop these arbitrary and discriminatory practices so that everyone has the equal right to leave the country,” Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch, has said.