By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Oct. 7: With China unabashedly implementing the coercive policy of mass labour transfer program in Tibet, lawmakers in the United Kingdom on Wednesday called on their government to take a tougher stance on the Chinese communist party and the upcoming 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing.
China has reportedly conducted mass transfer of Tibetans within Tibet and other parts of China according to Reuters’ finding from a hundred state media reports released between 2016- 2020. It cited Tibet’s regional government website in August that confirmed almost half a million rural Tibetans and nomads were trained in the first 7 months of 2020 into a labour transfer programme that entails military management and indoctrination sessions. Almost 50,000 Tibetans have been transferred for jobs within Tibet and several thousand sent to other parts of China.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP who led the calls said the harsh program is aimed “to dilute Tibetan identity” through “forced cultural assimilation”. “The Winter Olympics are planned to be in China. Many of us believe that, if it were any other country, there would now be calls for the Olympics to be moved. I simply say to the Government that they will have to take a stance on this issue pretty soon,” he said.
Fellow MP Tim Loughton, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet said that under the said Chinese government program, all the goats in western Tibet, especially in the Tingri region, were taken away from Tibetans.
“Tibetan nomads and farmers are now being turned into menial labourers and are concerned by the sudden change of their traditional nomadic or farming lives. This is the equivalent of the Westminster Government telling Welsh farmers to kill all their Welsh lambs and retrain as Ikea shop assistants, for example. It is extraordinary. Why can we not call this out for what it is? It is absolutely appalling,” he pointed out.
Lawmakers said that appropriate measures such as the passage of a reciprocal access bill for Tibet, the implementation of Magnitsky sanctions on CCP officials and tougher stance on the 2022 Winter Olympics may steer China to reconsider the repressive policies in Tibet.
Pro-Tibet activist group Free Tibet’s Chief Executive, Sam Walton welcomed the discourse, “The debate today was encouraging, demonstrating that a growing number of MPs from across the aisle are concerned about China’s human rights abuses in Tibet and want action.
“The demand for a stance on the upcoming Winter Olympics remind us that the UK does have leverage over China and that they can use it to bring about real, constructive change for Tibetans. This debate must be the beginning of a new approach by the UK to Tibet.”
