Amid the increasing cases of COVID-19 in Tibet, the Chinese government is using the guise of COVID protocol to further repress the Tibetan people, curtailing their fundamental freedoms.
The situation in Tibet is frightening as several videos circulated on social media, showing Tibetans talking about poor quarantine facilities with harsh quarantine rules and crowded testing sites with no social distancing rules followed, the Tibet Rights Collective reported.
Videos show the unavailability of food and medicines, barely edible food, no potable water and unplanned lockdowns further raising concerns about the safety of Tibetans.
A video showed Chinese health workers spraying chemicals right at Tibetan’s faces to ‘disinfect’ them in a quarantine concentration camp. A Tibetan woman and her baby are seen being directly sprayed by Covid workers in Qinghai.
A distressed woman from Lhasa posted a video berating the authorities for failing to provide adequate meals and care for people detained under the guise of covid prevention. In the video, she says the condition in detention is worse than in prison, the Tibet Rights Collective reported.
Another video showed how due to the closure of restaurants, shops and hotels in Tibet, local Tibetans in Lhasa had to distribute vegetables among themselves to sustain themselves.
A video shared by Tibetan organisation Students for Free Tibet highlighted how the Chinese government is using the guise of COVID protocol to further repress the Tibetan people.
It showed the authorities moving perfectly healthy young children and elderly Tibetans to dark rooms with no access to food and medical treatment. The authorities are reportedly mixing healthy people with those who have tested positive and they are put together in the same rooms, resulting in COVID-19 spreading rapidly, the Tibet Rights Collective reported.
However, the Communist government has not taken it as a concern, but is only aiming for a COVID-free region by taking measures that don’t work in favour of the ill.
What makes it more worrying is the fact that the CCP maintains a tight information blockade from the information of and from Tibet with foreign journalists and civil society not allowed access to Tibet.
Reports of CCP censoring Weibo posts about COVID-19 in Tibet are also pouring in. “The Weibo hashtag about the handling of the Tibetan coronavirus outbreak has been completely censored.”
The world is being shown a country like China handling the outbreak in a harmonious way, but the reality apparently is far from that. The measures being taken are too severe and not in the interest of the public at all.
The outbreak in Tibet began on August 7, 2022, and the lockdowns started happening right afterwards. The government was also in a state of shock due to the suddenness of the outbreak.
The human rights issue in Tibet has gotten much worse over the years and the Chinese government has never backed down from strengthening its torturous hold on the Tibetans. Surveillance of the Tibetans in Tibet by the communist party has been extreme and any suspicious act is dealt with unlawful arrests, detentions and false convictions.
The conflict between Tibet and China has been a topic of debate for years, but the Tibetan freedom struggle has not received the attention or the justice that it deserves till now.
COVID19 cases are rising in the Xinjiang region too, where the authorities are being called out for carrying out the ‘Hunger Genocide’. Many Uyghurs have been found dead in recent days due to hunger and disease in their homes because of the inhumane restrictions, reports suggest. The Uyghurs are experiencing hunger, forced quarantines and dwindling supplies of medicine and food.
But Chinese authorities are tightening their grip over Tibetans and Uyghurs and their fundamental freedoms are curtailed in the name of its Zero-COVID policy.