(TibetanReview.net, May15’24) —Highlighting a panoply of continued serious human rights violations in Tibet under Chinese rule, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) has on May 10 called for a series of steps to pressure Beijing to bring its policies and actions in Tibet (and the rest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)) in line with universally accepted standards.
Released by Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chair and Cochair of the bipartisan and bicameral CECC, the 2023 Annual Report on human rights conditions and rule of law developments in the PRC has especially documented Beijing’s “efforts to destroy the language and culture of ethnic groups, including Tibetans and Uyghurs.”
On Tibet, the report notes that China has continued to restrict and control the religious practices of Tibetans while indicating no willingness to resume formal negotiations with the Dalai Lama’s representatives.
The report takes note of the fact that China is keeping hundreds of Tibetans behind bars for political or religious expression, giving details of several notable cases, including the 11th Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, now aged 35 and having remained disappeared since he was 6.
The report accuses China of violating the linguistic rights of Tibetans in an attempt to force them to speak Chinese through “policies of neglect” and ignoring linguistic communities in Tibet. It notes that part of threat to the Tibetan identity comes from coerced residential boarding schools established by China in Tibet which separate Tibetan children from their families.
The report recommends that both Congress and the Joe Biden administration take a series of steps to pressure China to take corrective steps to improve its human rights records in Tibet.
It has called on the US to work with the United Nations to help set up visits by UN human rights officials, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteurs to visit and report on the conditions in Tibet.
The commission has urged the Congress to adopt and implement appropriate legislation to prohibit American companies doing business with Chinese police and other law enforcement agencies in Tibet from selling or providing equipment used by those forces in gross human rights violations, including mass coercive biometric data-gathering and surveillance programs.
The commission wants the US to work with like-minded countries to pressure China on Tibetan religious freedom and the right of Tibetan Buddhists to identify and educate all religious teachers, including the Dalai Lama.
It Urges the Chinese government to cease treating the Dalai Lama as a security threat, and encourage the resumption of genuine dialogue, without preconditions, between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama or his representatives.
It calls for the release of Tibetan political prisoners currently detained or imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their human rights.
And it urges the Chinese government to invite representatives of governments and international organizations to meet with the detained 11th Panchen Lama, and his parents, all of whom disappeared shortly after his recognition by the Dalai Lama in 1995.