Country: China

Group: Tibetan

Date Finalized: 10/18/2021

Team: Hunter Blevins (lead), Samantha Bradford

Content Warning: forced relocation

Approximate Time Period: 1959, 2006-2012, 2020

Evidence indicates China has forcibly removed and resettled Tibetans from their homes. We rate this data a 3 out of 3 because there is an ample amount of documentation from scholarly, peer-reviewed sources.

Tibet was an independent, Buddhist nation prior to China’s invasion of the region in 1950. China incorporated some lands into provinces and designated the remaining portion as the Tibetan Autonomous Region under Chinese sovereignty (BBC, 2019). China began restructuring Tibetan life in the 1950s. They forced nomadic people in Tibet to settle into communes after a 1959 uprising (Goldstein, 1959). In January 2000, China began issuing policy initiatives as part of the Western Development Strategy, and started projects related to building infrastructure and expanding transportation. Between 2006 and 2012, China forcibly relocated over 2 million Tibetans from the Tibetan Autonomous Region to elsewhere within China to support these urbanization efforts (Minority Rights Group, 2017). Additionally, China has sedentarized and resettled hundreds of thousands of nomadic herders in “New Socialist Villages” (Human Rights Watch, 2013). As recently as 2020, the Chinese state has enacted policies that relocate Tibetan rural laborers through training and work programs (Zenz, 2020).

Sources

  1. BBC. (2019). Tibet profile. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16689779
  2. Goldstein, M. C. (1994). Change, conflict and continuity among a community of nomadic pastoralists: a case study from western Tibet, 1950-1990. Resistance and Reform in Tibet, 76-111.
  3. Human Rights Watch. (2013). They say we should be grateful – mass rehousing and relocation programs in Tibetan areas of China. Retrieved from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/06/27/they-say-we-should-be-grateful/mass-rehousing-and-relocation-programs-tibetan
  4. Minority Rights Group. (2017). World directory of minorities and indigenous peoples. Tibetans in China. Retrieved from: https://minorityrights.org/minorities/tibetans.
  5. Human Rights Watch. (2013). China: end involuntary rehousing, relocation of Tibetans -lack of consultation violates human rights, undermines culture. Retrieved from:https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/27/china-end-involuntary-rehousing-relocation-tibetans
  6. Zenz, A. (2020, October 09). Xinjiang's System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet. Retrieved from https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-xinjiangs-system-of-militarized-vocational-training-comes-to-tibet/