People’s Republic of China (PRC)

The fate of Ai Weiwei is representative for dozens of other recently arrested Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese authors and artists. Just one day in prison almost cost Tibetan author Pema Rinchen his life. The 25-year-old was arrested on 5 July 2011 and then - just 24 hours later - admitted to hospital with serious injuries, even though torture has been officially banned in China for more than 20 years.

Freedom of speech and religion is subject to increasingly sharp censorship in China. But many historical cultural sites, too, of Tibetans, Mongolians and Uighurs are threatened with destruction or are already being systematically destroyed. Since spring of 2009, in spite of criticism from the European Parliament, officials ordered the bulldozing of more than 70 percent of the historically significant old town area in the Uighur town of Kashgar, arbitrarily destroying world cultural heritage.

Repression in the Tibet Autonomous Region and adjacent Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures

While exercising their rights of assembly and free speech, many Tibetans lost their lives during the 2008 Uprisings on the Tibetan Plateau. In this respect the Committee Against Torture and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have urged the Chinese authorities to conduct investigations to bring those responsible to justice. However, the Chinese authorities continuously failed to provide information to the outside world. In its last follow-up communication to the Chinese authorities, the Committee said: "The State party should conduct a thorough and independent inquiry into the reported excessive use of force, including against peaceful demonstrators and notably monks, in Kardze county, Ngaba county and Lhasa. The State party should conduct prompt, impartial and effective investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment and should ensure that those responsible are prosecuted. The State party should ensure that all persons who were detained or arrested in the aftermath of the March 2008 events in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and neighbouring Tibetan prefectures and counties have prompt access to an independent lawyer and independent medical care and the right to lodge complaints in a confidential atmosphere, free from reprisal or harassment. Article 35 of China’s constitution guarantees right to freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. However, in practice, the Chinese authorities have been targeting and harassing human rights defender, journalists and bloggers by using spurious and vague national security related charges to silence their critic views. On 2 June 2011, Tashi Rabten, editor of banned literary magazine 'Shar Dungri' (Eastern Snow Mountain) was sentenced to 4 years in prison on charges of “inciting activities to split the nation” by the Ngaba Intermediatary People’s Court. Similarly, last December the same court sentenced three Tibetan writers namely Dhonkho and Buddha to four years and Kelsang Jinpa to three years respectively on similar charges.

On 8 June the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances urged Chinese authorities to provide full information on the fate and whereabouts of over 300 monks of the Ngaba Kirti Monastery who reportedly disappeared on 21 April after a military raid at the monastery. In its response, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said there had been “no such thing as enforced disappearance’’ of the monks. However, the spokesman admitted to have “conducting legal education” in the Kirti monastery but avoided the use of the words "patriotic reeducation" conducting by communist cadres. As the monks were being driven away in large trucks, the group of laypeople - mainly in their forties or older - who had been standing vigil at the monastery gate were beaten “mercilessly” by police according to sources. “People had their arms and legs broken, one old woman had her leg broken in three places, and cloth was stuffed in their mouths to stifle their screams” sources informed. Under such brutal a crackdown, two elderly Tibetans namely Dongko, male, aged 60 and 65-year old Sherkyi died while attempting to prevent the monks from being taken away by the security forces. The Chinese authorities have now closed Tibet Autonomous Region to outsiders for the second time this year including Tibetans from neighbouring provinces. We wonder why they need to carry out such a restriction if the situation is “normal”, as the Chinese authority always claims. Despite the brutal crackdown they face the Tibetan people continue to risk their lives in protests when, as recently as on 9 and 10 June, the monks and nuns staged protests alone or in small groups in the Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture calling for freedom and the return of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Situation in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (XAR)

The government has taken measures that have threatened the survival of the language of the Uyghur people, who are indigenous to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). In 2002, Wang Lequan, the former Communist Party Secretary for the region, declared that the Uyghur language was “out of step with the 21st century.” Soon thereafter, in 2004, the government ratcheted up efforts to shift the medium of instruction throughout the entire education system in the region - from preschool to high school - from Uyghur to Mandarin Chinese. The authorities claim that the language policy is making the region’s school system “bilingual”, but the trend has been toward eliminating instruction in Uyghur language completely or relegating Uyghur language to a second level. In 2008, Xinjiang Chair Nur Bekri described criticisms of “bilingual” education as an attack from the "three forces" of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism operating outside China - an accusation peaceful Uyghur dissent is often confronted with. The Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (REAL) entitles minorities to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, including in education. However, the so called “bilingual” education policy breaches provisions in Chinese law to protect ethnic minority languages and undermines the autonomous status of the Uyghur region. Language restrictions in Xinjiang have coincided with government restrictions on political, religious, cultural and economic freedoms and represent an attempt to dilute and erode Uyghur ethnic identity and forcibly assimilate Uyghurs into Chinese culture. Chinese authorities are doing everything in their power to prevent any independent information from getting out concerning the crushing of the protests and the abuse and torture of those arrested. More than a dozen Web administrators, bloggers and journalists have been sentenced to more than ten years in prison in an attempt to block independent reporting. Chinese security agents have even spied on Uighurs in exile who have given information to foreign journalists, and have successfully exerted political pressure to have them extradited to China. As recently as June 2011 Beijing managed to have former teacher Ershidin Israel deported from Kazakhstan back to China. Ershidin told US journalists about the violent death of a Uighur political prisoner. Now he is facing the death penalty in China for "terrorism." Twenty Uighurs, who fled to Cambodia with the aid of Christian missionaries to escape the unrest in Urumchi, were deported to China on 19 December 2009 and since then have been missing without a trace. At least 18 Uyghur refugees have been extradited to China from Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and Kazakhstan since the end of May 2011 - although they are in mortal danger there. Just recently - on 18th of August - Malaysia turned over eleven Uyghurs to the Chinese authorities

The case of the Mongolian human rights activist Hada

The civil rights activist Hada is being held illegally in an irregular prison near the airport in Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The political prisoner, who served a 15-year sentence for his efforts in supporting the rights of the Mongolian ethnic minority, should have been released on Human Rights Day (10 December 2010). Hada was sentenced to 15 years in prison because he distributed books about the destruction of Mongolian culture by China. Hada's closest relatives have also been imprisoned, after they alerted international media to his fate. A few days before his sentence was officially to end on 10 December 2010, his wife Xinna and his son Uiles disappeared without a trace. Later a photograph of Hada with his family was published on the Internet, with no clue given as to their whereabouts. On 17 January 2011, Xinna and Uiles were formally arrested on the pretense that they had committed economic crimes and were in possession of drugs. Other friends and relatives of the 56-year-old book dealer have been intimidated, placed under house arrest or arrested. The roughly 5.8 million Mongolians living in Inner Mongolia were systematically "sinicized" throughout the 20th century. As millions of Han Chinese moved to the area, the Mongolians became a minority in their own region, where today they make up only 20 percent of the population.

In relation to bilateral and EU relations Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the German government to work for:

• the immediate and unconditional release all of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners

   

   

• the respect of the rights of ethnic minorities including Tibetans and Uighurs and Mongols as guaranteed in its constitution and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

   

   

• allowing Kirti monastery monks to return to their monastery for studying

   

   

• an end ongoing patriotic re-education campaigns and immediately withdraw military personnel stationed in and around the Kirti Monastery

   

   

• measures to protect the languages and thus the identity of the minority and indigenous peoples living in the territory of the People’s Republic of China