Ethnic inequality, discrimination and cultural extinction fueled by the Chinese government — more than any other human rights issues — are at the root of Tibetans’ and Uighurs’ resentment toward Chinese rule, speakers said at a forum in Taipei on human rights conditions in Tibet and Xinjiang yesterday.
“People around the world often condemn the Chinese government for human rights abuses in Tibet, but we Tibetans do not care so much whether we live well in Tibet,” envoy of the Tibetan government-in-exile Dawa Tsering told the forum, which was organized by the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
“What we care most about is whether the Tibetan nation and culture will survive,” he said.
Throughout history, Tibetans were not a unified people and the concept of a sovereign state in the modern sense never existed in the minds of Tibetans before the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet in the 1950s, he said.
“The reason why most Tibetan civilians did not resist when the Chinese army entered Tibet in 1951 was because the concept that ‘our country is being invaded,’ did not exist for them,” Dawa said.
“However, Tibetans rose against Chinese rule in 1959 because the Chinese were touching on something that Tibetans felt closely attached to,” he said.
Beijing’s official accounts and information provided by Tibet support groups around the world say that Chinese destroyed more than 6,000 temples, arrested monks and confiscated private property following the occupation.
Aside from threatening Tibetan religion, Dawa accused Beijing of trying to destroy Tibetan culture.
“Take me: I don’t speak Tibetan very well, even though I grew up in Tibet and my parents speak only Tibetan. That’s because I attended elementary school during the Cultural Revolution and the Tibetan language was not allowed in school,” Dawa said, adding that although Tibetan language instruction was later permitted, it was more for “cosmetic” purposes.
Today, 90 percent of school lessons in Tibet are still in Chinese. For the remainder, students can choose between Tibetan and English, he said.
“A civilization that loses its language becomes one that is only good for display in a museum,” he said. “So we’re not asking for perfect human rights conditions in Tibet. We only have a humble wish that the Tibetan nation and culture be allowed to survive.”
Dawa said it is no secret that Tibetans and Chinese are treated unequally, even by government institutions.
“China calls Tibet an ‘autonomous region,’ but the great majority of government officials are Han Chinese,” he said. “The few exceptions are those Tibetans whose father or mother is Han Chinese, or those who married Han Chinese.”
If China would grant genial autonomy to Tibetans and allow Tibetan culture to develop freely, “Tibetans would not necessarily seek independence,” Dawa said.
Political commentator Paul Lin (林保華) said that a similar situation prevailed among Uighurs in Xinjiang.
“Encouraged by the Chinese government, Han Chinese settlers poured into Xinjiang, took control of local economic activity, threatened Uighur culture and openly discriminated against Uighurs,” said Lin, a Chinese who was formerly a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Official census data shows that Uighurs account for 45 percent of the population in Xinjiang, while Han Chinese make up 41 percent.
“Chinese officials discourage employers from hiring Uighurs, Uighurs are paid less [than Han Chinese] for the same work and they barred Uighur pilots from flying during the Beijing Olympics last year, for fear they would engage in terrorist activity,” Lin said.
“It’s understandable that the Uighurs would revolt. Even if, as Chinese media contend, more Han Chinese than Uighurs were killed during clashes in Urumqi earlier this month, it’s the Chinese Communist Party — not the Uighurs — that should be held responsible,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching