Chinese presence in Tibet, and China´s policies towards the autonomous region, have once again come under scrutiny following charges brought against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in Spain.  A group of exiled Tibetans, coordinated by the Madrid-based Committee to Support Tibet (CAT), has filed genocide charges against seven former CCP officials in the Spanish Constitutional Court, where a principle called universal jurisdiction allows for the prosecution of international cases not involving Spanish citizens, provided the defendants are not being tried in their home country. Matthew Graham reports for Index on Censorship

Photo of Beijing-Lhasa railway opened in July 2006


The legal principle originated in 1998 when National Court judge Baltazar Garzon ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to face torture allegations involving some Spaniards.

The events of the current case go back to the People’s Liberation Army’s 1949 invasion and up through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Former President Jiang Zemin, former Prime Minister Li Peng, former Family Planning Minister Deng Delyun, former security chief Qiao Shi and former party chiefs Ren Rong, Yin Fatang and Chen Kuiyan are all accused of genocide, torture and general crimes against humanity. Chinese authorities have called the assertions “sheer libel and fabrication against China”.

The case asserts that more than one million Tibetans were displaced, killed or died under Chinese rule and more than 90 per cent of the region’s religious institutions were destroyed. While most involved know that the seven in question will likely not face repercussions even if charged, they believe the international acknowledgment of the crimes committed is a victory in itself. As proceedings began in June, an assessment of the future of Tibet’s youth, culture and economy became a focal point once again for Europe’s human rights community.

Long history of strife between the People´s Republic of China and Tibet
Strife between the People´s Republic of China and Tibet has permeated the decades of Communist occupation. While the 1949 invasion and 1951 takeover of Tibet by the People´s Republic of China is generally seen as the start of the current conflict, warfare between the two has spanned centuries. the People´s Republic of China took over Tibet in 1951, after two years of fighting, making Tibet part of the People´s Republic of China but promising autonomy and religious freedom. However, by 1954, the Chinese had begun instilling their own policies, such as collectivisation, and suppressing the Tibetan culture. A resistance movement formed but failed and, in 1959, the Dalai Lama went into exile in India along with thousands of his followers. The Great Leap Forward, also started in 1959, lead to famine and the Cultural Revolution from 1965 to 1976 involved a program of heavy religious repression including the destruction of 90 per cent of Tibet’s monasteries and temples. In 1980 Party Secretary Hu Yaobang, on a visit to Tibet, restored some religious freedom, though acknowledgement of the exiled government or spiritual leader are still illegal.

While opinions vary to extremes among native and exiled Tibetans, after years of suppression a significant amount simply want a degree of autonomy under Chinese rule. Some believe that the government is simply waiting for the 71 year-old Dalai Lama to die before conceding further degrees of autonomy, but there are fears that the figurehead’s death will either see a bleak period without leadership for the Tibetans or will inspire another attempted uprising against the Chinese.

Some believe that, with the loss of the Dalai Lama, who has kept local hope alive and kept the issue in international debate, it will only be a matter of time before Tibetan culture disappears. Coupled with the lack of leadership is the youths’ having grown up under Chinese authority and having witnessed the relative wealth of the mainland migrants to Tibet, inciting speculation that the new generation will abandon their culture in hopes of cashing in on the new economy. Others believe that these young Tibetans, years of Chinese exploitation of their lands having driven them into poverty, may tend towards extremism and violence.

Together with practical exploits aimed at subduing Tibetans economically are local laws and practices and international strategies meant to destroy them culturally. A 1995 report to the UN from the Tibetan Youth Congress asserts that children face discrimination for being Tibetan. The Tibetan language has been completely devalued and the Chinese try to limit their number of children; recent exiled Tibetans have reported involuntary sterilisation.

Although allowing general Buddhist practices, the People´s Republic of China continues to show its lack of respect for local customs and beliefs through its overt contempt for any acknowledgment of the Dalai Lama or the exiled government. Anyone with photographs or other depictions of the Dalai Lama in Tibet is arrested.

Economic Warfare
In the meantime the Chinese Communist Party has been using a common method of pre-empting such an uprising, sending thousands of ethnic Hans, the Chinese majority population, to Tibet under the pretext of economic development. The completion of the Beijing-Lhasa railway in July will facilitate just such practices and, as such, has resulted in protest from exiled Tibetans the world over.

This population influx is nothing new. According to the Tibet Government in Exile, the government forced migration to Tibet in the 80s through a program called “Giving Help to Tibet.” Now the government has replaced forced migration with economic incentives to those willing to relocate. Despite all the economic developments taking place in the region, the Tibetans aren’t benefiting at all. They, unlike the Han populations living there, have no electricity or hospitals and the few institutions in the countryside, such as schools, are purposefully inadequate.

the People´s Republic of China has also used international development projects, instituted by the EU and U.N. and funded by member nations, as an excuse to infuse the region with Han and to further exploit Tibetans, the exiled government alleges. They claim that the Chinese have forced Tibetans to change their crop from traditional barley to wheat, forced them to buy the seeds from the government at inflated prices and charged them heavy-handed taxes as well, programmes that strip Tibetans of their livelihood, reinforced by the world’s greatest powers. 

Tibetans are traditionally farmers, surviving on irrigation from the mountains. In what could be its most extreme exploit of the region, the People´s Republic of China intends to build a series of pipelines and canals extending 300 kilometers, taking water from Tibet’s Yangtze River in the south to supplement the “parched” Yellow River in the populous north and east of the People´s Republic of China. The plan will likely begin by 2010 with the intention of eventually diverting up to 17 billion cubic metres annually. The effects on Tibet have not been addressed in the initial plans and, besides the consequences for the region, the fact that the People´s Republic of China has so exhausted its “mother river” raises questions about the long-term viability of the methods facilitating its booming economy.