‘A slow death’: like Uyghurs, Tibetans face cultural assimilation, experts fear

When former prime minister Paul Keating spoke earlier this month about AUKUS and Australia’s relationship with China, he softened his well-aimed blows by dodging condemnation of Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur people from Xinjiang province.

“I’m not going to defend China about the Uyghurs,” Keating said, after initially trying to ignore the question. “There’s a dispute about what the nature of the Chinese affronts to the Uyghurs is. There’s a dispute about that.”

Keating, who sat on the board of the state-run China Development Bank for 13 years from 2006-19, appears to be reflecting the pushback by the pro-Beijing lobby against the well-documented horrors being visited upon the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — and who are in various states of denial about the facts on the ground.

But what is happening in Xinjiang is real and concerning, with many experts describing the CCP’s “reeducation camps” — and forced abortions, sterilisations and labour — as a full-tilt cultural genocide.

Keating — or indeed his media interrogators — didn’t even mention Tibetans, who are similarly suffering and have been since the province was annexed by China in 1951. In the mire of the abuses in Xinjiang, China’s encroachment in the South China Sea and the beating drums of war, they have been somewhat forgotten. 

“Authorities have arbitrarily detained human rights defenders, tightened control over civil society, media and the internet, and deployed invasive mass surveillance technology,” Human Rights Watch said of Tibet in a recent report.

After the “success” Beijing has had in Xinjiang, it’s worth remembering Tibet was the prototype. In 2016, its CCP provincial secretary Chen Quanguo was moved to Xinjiang to ramp up the system of intense security and assimilation. 

In 2021, Wang Junzheng, head of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) — which the US has described as a “paramilitary structure” of the CCP — was appointed party secretary of Tibet. Former Chinese leader Hu Jintao cut his teeth running the province from 1988-92, imposing martial law for a time.

At its heart, Beijing’s programs in these two far-flung but strategically and resource-critical provinces — Xinjiang has huge energy and mineral deposits, agricultural land and renewable energy installations; Tibet is the main source of water for China’s rivers — are about removing self-determination for ethnic minorities. Smaller programs of repression assimilation have been targeted at other ethnoreligious groups, including Hui Muslims, who have lived in China since the days of the ancient Silk Road.

Last week, Tibet’s leader-in-exile, Penpa Tsering — known as Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) — addressed the US Congress for the first time, by video link, bringing the region’s issues again into the full glare of the US and its lobby groups.

“If PRC [the People’s Republic of China] is not made to reverse or change its current policies, Tibet and Tibetans will definitely die a slow death,” he said.

Uzra Zeya, the US under secretary of state for democracy and human rights, told the congressional hearing that China was waging “a campaign of repression that seeks to forcibly Sinicise” Tibetans and eliminate Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic heritage.

China’s response was swift and typical: “The US should take concrete actions to honour its commitment of acknowledging Tibet as part of China, and stop meddling in China’s internal affairs.”

There are an estimated 6 to 7 million Tibetans who live in Tibet and surrounding Chinese provinces. Significant numbers live in the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan. Both Tibet and Tibetan areas of other Chinese provinces are off-limits to journalists and require special permits to enter. 

“Roughly 1 million Tibetan minority children in China have been separated from their families and placed into government-run boarding schools, forcing their assimilation into the dominant culture,” UN human rights experts said in February.

“As a result, Tibetan children are losing their facility with their native language and the ability to communicate easily with their parents and grandparents in the Tibetan language, which contributes to their assimilation and erosion of their identity.” 

There is also continuing and bitter enmity between Beijing and the 14th Dalai Lama who is based in the northern Indian Himalayan town of Dharasalama, along with the CTA.

Two weeks ago, the Dalai Lama announced the reincarnation of Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoché (also known as Jebtsundamba Khutughtu) of Mongolia, the third-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.

“We have the reincarnation of Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoché with us today,” the Dalai Lama said, to a gathering of about 5000 monks and nuns and 600 Mongolians on March 8.

In 1995, the Dalai Lama named a Tibetan boy as the 11th Panchen Lama. Shortly afterwards, the child was allegedly abducted by Chinese authorities and has not been seen or heard from since. Then China announced its choice of the Panchen Lama. Naturally, the Dalai Lama has not backed up the Chinese choice.

Before Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ surprise media-free trip to China last week — the first by an Australian leader since the start of the pandemic — the Australian Tibet lobby begged him to ask about human rights violations in Tibet. Others believe he should have asked questions about detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei and writer Yang Hengjun.

When Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong visited China in December 2022, she raised human rights concerns, including Tibet. The Australia Tibet Council says Wong said: “The government will continue to raise our concerns about the human rights situation in Tibet, publicly and privately, in multilateral fora and directly with China, including at the highest levels.”

Earlier this month in Geneva, Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Tim Watts, as part of his statement at a session of the Human Rights Council, stated “Australia’s concerns about reports of the erosion of education, religious, cultural and linguistic rights and freedoms in Tibet”.

While Andrews’ trip makes sense in terms of maintaining warm trade relations with China, it’s unclear if he raised human rights issues. And it seems other premiers are lining up to follow his example. At the weekend, WA Premier Mark McGowan said he would lead a five-day trade mission to China, the state’s largest trading partner and source of most of China’s iron ore. Unlike Andrews, he’s taking reporters.

But Australia needs to be careful that the rush to reestablish better ties with China (AUKUS notwithstanding) is not purely on China’s terms, without the consistent message that the country needs to improve its human rights from all of our leaders who visit.