Expressing “grave concern” over the buildup, Freedom House has said that Tibetans are “significantly less” free today than five years ago.
Massive Chinese military buildup in Tibet ahead of tomorrow's 50th anniversary of the uprising against the Communist rule may lead to more repression and unrest in the coming days, a top US think tank has said.
Expressing “grave concern” over the buildup, Freedom House has said that Tibetans are “significantly less” free today than five years ago.
"Conditions in Tibet have reached a critical level," said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. "The international community has largely turned a blind eye to China's human rights abuses in Tibet. The average Tibetan is clearly less free and in more personal danger today than they were just five years ago.”
But as China's leadership asserts itself more on the global stage, the think tank believes it provides an opportunity to hold them to “appropriate standards of international behavior."
Resentment of Chinese rule, it said, has grown in the lead up to the March 10 anniversary, with China's leaders responding by ordering the largest troop deployment since the Sichuan earthquake last year and enforcing a curfew on Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Ethnic tensions also have been exacerbated by China forcing nomadic herders to resettle and moving more Han Chinese into Tibet.
An analysis of data from 'Freedom in the World', Freedom House's annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, finds a sharp decline in civil liberties in Tibet since 2004, with China increasing repression in a number of ways.
Chinese repression in Tibet, the report said, include military curbs on freedom of movement, more official control of Tibetan Buddhism and the imposition of greater bureaucratic restrictions following last year's anti-government protests.
Security forces in Tibet, it adds, routinely engage in arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and execution without due process, punishing even nonviolent protests against Chinese rule. Political rights in Tibet remained “abysmal” during the same period.
For years, “China-controlled Tibet” has received Freedom House's worst possible ranking in 'Freedom in the World', putting it on par with human rights abusers such as Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe.
In each of the last two years, Tibet received a downward trend arrow, in part related to China's crackdown on ethnic minorities in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics.
China and Tibet (China) is ranked "Not Free" in the 2009 edition of Freedom in the World, Freedom House's survey of political rights and civil liberties, and "Not Free" in the 2008 version of "Freedom of the Press".
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