(TibetanReview.net, Mar02, 2014) – The US State Department said Feb 27 that Chinese repression in Tibet was severe throughout 2013, six days after President Barack Obama welcomed Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in the White House. The finding is contained in a special Tibet section of the department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013.
The report focuses on a range of severe human rights abuses in Tibet, including continued arbitrary detention of Tibetans for indefinite periods of time, and extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial detentions, and house arrests. It especially deals with the recently implemented new Chinese policies “that punish friends, relatives, and associates of self-immolators.” It notes that the new policy has resulted in the sentencing of nearly 90 Tibetans (in Qinghai and Gansu provinces alone), including a death sentence.
The report says the so-called autonomous Tibet lacked any real autonomy, with the Tibetans having no meaningful role to play in the protection of their cultural heritage and unique natural environment.
The report says “Economic and social exclusion” were significant drivers of discontent among Tibetans.
The report also details China’s attempts to hide the real situation in Tibet resulting from its policies, including with persistent denials of access to the region to foreign diplomats, journalists, and even foreign tourists ahead of politically sensitive anniversaries, such as the Mar 10 Tibetan National Uprising Day.
The separate section on Tibet in the State Department’s annual global, country-wise human rights report was mandated by Congress in 2002.
China released a tit-for-tat report on the human rights situation in the USA. Posing as “the world judge of human rights,” the US government “made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks” on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released reports, the report said. The report, titled as The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013, was released by the Information Office of China’s State Council, or the Cabinet.