This is Part 5 of a series of 8 Articles best read in conjunction.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8
A closer examination of the impact Tibetans experienced due to their encounter with the Han Chinese.
[5] The Present Situation in Tibet
Population control:
Even thought Tibetans are supposed to be allowed more than one child, the reality is that in cities a strict one child policy is enforced, with second pregnancies compulsorily terminated.
Abortions are carried out until full term of nine months, where the baby is killed by injecting it with a poison, which inevitably induces abortion.
Even if the mother manages to evade the attention of the Chinese authorities and gives birth to a healthy baby, it invariably is taken away and killed by the medical staff, and the mother is then told that the baby was still born, even though she could hear the baby’s first cry.
Thus, infanticide is part of the population control of Tibetans by the Han Chinese.
Here is an account of one Tibetan Doctor who had her second pregnancy forcibly terminated:
“First they insert a sort of flexible rubber tube with a pointed end into the cervix. There is no medicine in this. They leave this inside for 24 hours. Because it stimulates the birth canal, which opens up slowly and gives way to the flow of blood, a lot of bleeding starts after two hours. After one day they take it out. It has become bigger inside so it is easier for the knife to get inside. They insert an instrument which has a sort of long handle with a knife at the end. They put this inside and start to move it around, cutting the fetus in pieces…… Once it has been reduced to small pieces it is removed by using a sort of compressor. ……..Besides the lack of proper medical equipment to do that, I was not even given anaesthesia and thus experienced excruciating pain at the time. No words have the power to express the excruciating pain I experience during the operation. There was no medical treatment afterwards…. I do not know what has been damage inside me…My physical and mental well-being have been badly affected. After the abortion I was not well …… I had a period twice a month, sometimes for 15 days at a time…..”
As a consequence of such crude and makeshift ‘medical’ procedures infections, long term excruciating pain and complications, irregular periods and bleeding etc. are the norm and endemic, and in many instances the woman dies as a result of such inept medical conduct, and in at least one report which came to light a woman ended up paralysed.
The Han Chinese operate mobile birth control units which visit every village and town. Everyone must attend or face a fine of equal up to five years salary.
There, Tibetan women are forcibly sterilized by the Han Chinese team, which, under a quota system with financial incentives for them, is highly motivated to enforce as many sterilisations as possible.
These sterilisations are carried out in the same unethical fashion as abortions, with severe complications widespread among the Tibetan victims of such inept procedures.
Tibetan women who resist are threatened with having their valuables or household items confiscated, or face heavy fines, which they possibly could never pay. Loosing their job or other economic sanctions are also routinely used to force Tibetan women to submit to these forced sterilisations.
Women who have forcibly been sterilised by these roaming teams report excruciating pain, with no anaesthetic being administered, and that they literally had their fallopian tubes ripped out from their ovaries during their ‘operation’.
Severe long term complications are a routine consequence of such unethical ‘medical conduct’ for these Tibetan women.
Economic sanctions against Tibetan women who have additional children include permanent demotions and the potential loss of employment for both parents, as well as fines equating up to to 6 years salary.
‘Illegal’ children are denied legal papers which would give them the right to identity, attend school, own property, travel, participate in any legal work, or obtain a ration card.
Economic situation
The economic situation for Tibetans is as dire as all other aspects of their lives.
Many get forcibly removed from their land to make way for settlements for new Chinese immigrants, with no compensation to the Tibetans for the loss of their land. Recently several hundred thousand of Tibetan farmers, herders and nomads have forcibly been evicted from their traditional lands and housed in ghetto style compounds at their own expense without compensation. There they face unremitting surveillance, with armed PAP being constantly stationed outside such dour compounds. These ghettos are most often located in remote areas, too far to commute to any work.
This leaves these dispossessed Tibetans without means of earning a living, having been stripped of their entire economic base, land, farm animals, even being prohibited from gathering wild herbs and fruit on their traditional lands.
Discrimination
The new Han migrants are encouraged through very lucrative incentives to settle in Tibet, a policy designed to sinocize Tibet, and in the process to eradicate Tibetan identity.
This is in an attempt to legitimize Chinese annexation of Tibet, once the Tibetan Diaspora, in their own land, has largely been eliminated.
Annual wages for Chinese employees are some 87% higher in Tibet than in China. Han Chinese entrepreneurs receive special tax exemptions and loans at very low interest rates, whereas for Tibetans to start an enterprise in their own homeland, even just getting a license to do so is virtually impossible.
Han Chinese settlers also enjoy benefits of three months paid vacation back in China, special pension, healthcare, schooling and housing benefits, subsidized food; none of which is available to the indigenous Tibetans. Some of these preferential benefits are escalated the longer Chinese settler remain in Tibet.
Further discriminations against Tibetans include: virginity testing, verbal abuse, preferential treatment for Han workers e.g. grants of leave or promotions not granted to Tibetans, higher wages for Han Chinese, dismissal if a family member is deemed to be a “separatist”, widespread sexual harassment by Chinese of Tibetan women, sexual extortion under the threat of loosing their jobs, etc.
With this background of economic disadvantage and clear discrimination, it is impossible for Tibetans to compete on any level with Chinese settlers.
Inevitably most businesses and shops are owned by Chinese and hiring practices by the Han Chinese favour their own kin, leaving Tibetans unable to benefit from any economic improvement.
Indeed, this so called economic growth is proving a clear disadvantage to Tibetans as the inevitable price increases, the massive influx of Han Chinese, subsidies and development for the benefit of these settlers, leaves Tibetans ever further behind and unable to compete, and as a consequence Tibetans are severely disenfranchised and suffer a much lower standard of living.
Schooling
The schooling provided for Tibetans in most areas in the TAR is often of very little value to students if any at all, that is if there are schools available.
Very few if any of the primary level teachers are qualified, for middle school about one third are not qualified and for High School only about forty percent are qualified; that is sixty percent have no experience or qualifications to teach.
Reports by students and parents describe a situation where the Chinese teachers would appear some days for a while and then go to run their restaurant in town, leaving the students to their own devices, and of course untaught.
These Han “teachers” only speak in Mandarin, a language foreign to most Tibetan students, and hence they gain very little to nothing from such teachers, even if, in the few instances, they apply themselves to the teaching job they’re paid for.
This is a very widespread situation affecting Tibetan students, relegated to the status of third class citizens in their own country and consigned to ‘dustbin’ classes reserved for Tibetans only.
However, the Han Chinese are closing down large numbers schools run by Tibetans who dedicated themselves to fill the vacuum and meet the need for education for Tibetan children. One such recent casualty was the Vocational Education School, in Driru County, Nagchu Prefecture, which was financed with support from the International Red Cross Society.
The curriculum included English, Tibetan and Chinese languages, it also taught physics, medicine, chemistry, art and mural paintings. The school had over 250 pupils and a staff of 20 teachers.
Thereafter the Han Chinese converted this school into a state run school and dismissed all staff except for the founder teacher, Tenzin Thabkhey, but demoted him to a lowly position.
Today, locals report that no serious learning is taking place there and the teachers just ‘while their time away’.
Many other schools financed and run by Tibetans have been closed down by the Han Chinese, one other example is the ‘Pad-kar School’ founded and built by Lobsang Nyandrak who mortgaged his personal property, and raised donations from local Tibetan people in Nagchu County, Nagchu Prefecture. The school had over 200 pupils and taught a similar range of subjects to eager pupils for free.
The Han Chinese’s program they tout as Affirmative Action or Positive Discrimination in education provides another tool for the marginalisation of the Tibetan people and their culture.
Schools where Tibetan children can get a higher education are not situated in Tibet, but are located in mainland China.
These middle schools are provided after passing examination and are designed to thoroughly sinicize young Tibetans in a process of grooming them for administrative position in the TAR.
The rationale is clear; after these children spent most of their formative years away from their families, Tibet and Tibetan culture in far away mainland China and are exclusively exposed to Chinese indoctrination and way of thinking they can then become trusted leaders and administrators in the Tibetan areas, being of Tibetan ethnicity but with the minds of Han Chinese.
This course of discrimination by inverse action is part of the CCP’s policy of eradicating every aspect of Tibetan culture and identity and allows them to use such terms as ‘affirmative action’ in their papers, reports and propaganda, which are all one and the same.
This is Part 5 of a series of 8 Articles best read in conjunction.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8
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