Even as China wants the world to believe that things are all rosy in Tibet, recent incidents in which two Tibetans immolated themselves within a span of one month has exposed the human rights violations inflicted by Beijing.
Among those who were killed included a 25-year-old popular singer of the capital Lhasa and an 81-year-old man of Ngaba in the Amdo province of Tibet which China has incorporated into its Sichuan province.
Last month on April 26 the Dharamshala based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) released its annual report on the human rights situation inside China ruled Tibet, reported Hong Kong Post.
TCHRD refers to about 160 known cases of self-immolations by ordinary Tibetans since 2009 when the Chinese government adopted a stringent clampdown on the freedom of movement and collective expression.
The Chinese president Xi Jinping faces protests from unhappy Tibetans who have refused to be tamed even after 70 years of colonial control and communist indoctrination. Last year in July when Xi suddenly arrived in Tibet on a 3-day visit Tibetans held protests against him.
Xi claimed that Chinese administrators of Tibet and the communist cadres will work tirelessly in the direction of establishing “Tibetan Buddhism with Chinese Socialist Characteristics”.
However, the claims fall flat as China failed to gain the faith of the Tibetans. China made false claims to usher Tibet into a new era of ‘economic development’ and to ‘liberate’ Tibet from the ‘feudal’ rule of Dalai Lama, but communist machinery in Tibet is finally unveiled.
Moreover, China is bent on cleansing Tibet of its traditional religious, cultural and social identity by assimilating its population into present-day China’s communist Han identity.
According to China’s own official statistics, the total size of 55 ‘ethnic nationalities’, all put together, is a little less than 8 per cent while the Hans stand for 92 per cent of China’s population, as per the media outlet.
In the last week of April this year, China’s Ministry of Education published a fresh set of regulations which govern the admission of senior Tibetan school children who intend to take admission into any university in Tibet or China.
LhadonTethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute, in an international seminar, said “In the name of education these little kids are being subjected to communist brainwashing and loyalty to the CCP. The number of such children in these schools has now gone beyond 800 thousand which is about 80 per cent population of Tibetan children in that age group.”