Newspaper dismisses HRW's Tibet relocation allegations
The People's Daily, the official
newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, ran
an article on Friday in response to criticisms made against the
country's relocation policy in the Tibet autonomous region (TAR).
Earlier this week, the New York-based
Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its annual World Report, criticizing
the Chinese government for "relocating and rehousing up to 80 percent of
the TAR population, including all pastoralists and nomads."
The People's Daily article, jointly
published by two Tibetology experts, said the HRW's conclusion was
groundless and contradictory to basic facts.
The two authors, Zhang Ming, or Lorong
Dramadul, with the China Tibetology Research Center and Professor Yang
Minghong with Sichuan University, hoped that their experiences and
observations from over 20 years of field research in Tibet could help
clarify the misunderstandings.
They cited official statistics and said
that in 2011 1.85 million Tibetans, or 61 percent of the total
population, had settled in permanent residences. Most of them had never
left their original communities, but had their new homes built on the
same sites as their original homes.
"No more than 150,000 people, or less
than 5 percent of the Tibetan population, had left their original
residence," the experts wrote.
They said the housing program was
introduced in 2006 in order to offer Tibetans better housing and living
conditions through massive government subsidies and support.
They also responded to allegations regarding the policy's role in changing the living patterns of nomads.
The experts noted that nomads used to
live in tents while searching for pastures in chilly winter and making
long-distance travel in summer, leaving them with little access to
health care or education services.
By 2010, comfortable houses had been
built for 30,000 nomad families in Tibet, the two experts said. Most of
the new homes were built along the path linking those winter pastures.
Therefore, the nomads could maintain their traditions while children and
the elderly don't need to suffer from the travel, they added.
Moreover, the housing program also
brought better infrastructure, public services and jobs to those
traditional communities, the experts said.
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