The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) is pleased to announce the release of the 2013 Annual Report on the human rights situation in Tibet and ‘Gulags of Tibet’, a special report on Re-education Through Labour (Ch: laojiao) system in Tibet.
The 2013 Annual Report, available in Tibetan and English, focuses on Civil and Political Rights, Religious Repression, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Religious Repression, the China’s development strategy, and self-immolations. The theme of the 2013 Annual Report is the continued implementation of nomad resettlement and relocation policy. Tibetan nomads have been forced from their ancestral lands and resettled/relocated in urban areas, mostly against their wishes and without adequate compensation. The newly built urban areas where they are forced to resettle cannot sustain their centuries-old way of life, and compared to Chinese migrant workers, nomads receive less state support in terms of finding employment and other sources of livelihood. It was widely estimated that 90% of all Tibetan nomads in Qinghai Province would be resettled at the end of 2013. Despite claims to the contrary, the primary reason for the forced relocation of the nomads is to exploit rich mineral resources from the nomadic lands. State-owned mining companies have already begun the massive extraction of precious minerals such as lithium, copper, chrome, gold and oil.
