Beijing effectively bans Tibetans and other ethnic minorities from obtaining passports, Human Rights Watch said yesterday, amid a surge in Chinese tourists traveling abroad.
Beijing has created a two-tier system, the report said, one for areas populated by the ethnic Han majority and a more cumbersome system for areas inhabited by Tibetan and Muslim minorities.
“If you are a religious minority who lives in a part of the country where most people are minorities, it is virtually impossible to get a passport,” Human Rights Watch China director Sophie Richardson said.
In most parts of China, a passport must be issued within 15 days: If there is a delay, the authorities must notify the applicant.
However, in Tibet and Xinjiang, inhabited by 10 million Uighurs, officials use an older method for passport applications that requires more documents and sometimes political vetting, the report said.
Fewer than 10 percent of prefectures in China still use the older system, with all but one inhabited mostly by ethnic minorities, the report said.
Just two passports were issued in Tibet’s Chengdu Prefecture, known as Chamdo in Tibetan, in 2012, the report said, even though it has a population of 650,000. No overall figures were available for Tibet.
Hundreds of Uighurs were detained last year on charges of illegally entering Thailand, fleeing what rights groups say is religious persecution in China. The Uighurs said they were Turkish citizens and 181 were allowed to go to Turkey, with more than 100 others repatriated.
Meanwhile, mainland Chinese travelers took more than 100 million “outbound” trips last year, government figures showed, with most visiting Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
“It is clearly not the case that the state is having massive difficulties issuing passports to some people,” Richardson said. “You would think that capacity would be spread evenly across ethnic groups, but that does not seem to be the case.”
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