More info on the ethnic cleansing of Tibet

China's invasion by 40,000 troops in 1950 was an act of unprovoked aggression. There is no generally accepted legal basis for China's claim of sovereignty.

Ten years later 100,000 Tibetans fled with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and temporal ruler.

In 1993 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees handled 3,700 Tibetan cases.

To avoid detection many refugees, who are poorly clothed, are forced to use the 19,000 ft. Nangpa-La pass below Everest. The Nepalese authorities continue to turn refugees over to the Chinese.

Chinese Administration of Tibet

By the 17-Point Agreement of 1951 China undertook not to interfere with Tibet's existing system of government and society, but never kept these promises in eastern Tibet and in 1959 reneged on the treaty altogether.


China has renamed two out of Tibet's three provinces as parts of the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, and renamed the remaining province of U'Tsang as Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).


There is no evidence to support China's claim that TAR is autonomous: all local legislation is subject to approval of the central government in Beijing; all local government is subject to the regional party, which in Tibet has never been run by a Tibetan. Much enforcement of Chinese law is ad hoc and subject to local interpretation due to wording being deliberately ambiguous.

The Human Cost

Reprisals for the 1959 National Uprising alone involved the elimination of 87,000 Tibetans by the Chinese count, according to a Radio Lhasa broadcast of 1 October 1960. Tibetan exiles claim that 430,000 died during the Uprising and the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare.


Some 1.2 million Tibetans are estimated to have been killed by the Chinese since 1950.


The International Commission of Jurists concluded in its reports, 1959 and 1960, that there was a prima facie case of genocide committed by the Chinese upon the Tibetan nation. These reports deal with events before the Cultural Revolution. Chinese Justice: Protest and Prisons


Exile sources estimate that up to 260,000 people died in prisons and labour camps between 1950 and 1984.


Unarmed demonstrators have been shot without warning by Chinese police on five occasions between 1987 and 1989. Amnesty International believes that "at least 200 civilians" were killed by the security forces during demonstrations in this period. There are also reports of detainees being summarily executed.


Some 3,000 people are believed to have been detained for political offences since September 1987, many of them for writing letters, distributing leaflets or talking to foreigners about the Tibetans' right to independence.


The number of political detainees in Lhasa's main prison, Drapchi, is reported to have doubled between 1990 and 1994. The vast majority of political inmates are monks or nuns. A political prisoner in Tibet can now expect an average sentence of 6.5 years.


Over 230 Tibetans were detained for political offences in 1995, a 50% increase on 1994, bringing the total in custody to over 600.


Detailed accounts show that the Chinese conducted a campaign of torture against Tibetan dissidents in prison from March 1989 to May 1990. However, beatings and torture are still regularly used against political detainees and prisoners today. Such prisoners are held in sub-standard conditions, given insufficient food, forbidden to speak, frequently held incommunicado and denied proper medical treatment.


Beatings and torture with electric shock batons are common; prisoners have died from such treatment. In 1992, Palden Gyatso, a monk who had been tortured by the Chinese for over 30 years, bribed prison guards to hand over implements of torture. The weapons, smuggled out of Tibet, were displayed in the west in 1994 and 1995.


Despite China having ratified a number of UN conventions, including those relating to torture, women, children and racial discrimination, the Chinese authorities have been repeatedly violating these conventions in China and Tibet.


Nearly all prisoners arrested for political protest are beaten extensively at the time of arrest and initial detention. Serious physical maltreatment has also been recorded in a significant proportion of cases. In the period 1994-1995, three nuns died shortly after release from custody as a result of ill-treatment and torture in detention.

The Chinese have refused to allow independent observers to attend so-called public trials. Prison sentences are regularly decided before the trial. Fewer than 2% of cases in China are won by the defence.