The June 2019 publication of Monthly Translation and Analyses Digest monitoring Chinese government media on Tibet includes the following articles: China announces prize money for tip-offs on illegal online contents in Tibet China admits anti- separatist crackdown part of anti-crime campaign Central government inspection teams visit TAR and Qinghai Chinese authorities claim victory in anti-crime crackdown amid central government inspection…
In May this year, the Nangchen County People’s Court sentenced the 21 Tibetans in two groups. The first group of 11 Tibetans from Do Thrang village in Shordha town were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to six years and monetary fines from 10000 to 50000 yuan.
Last month, Chinese authorities announced the acceleration of the ‘pairing assistance’ program as part its overall goal to end poverty in Ba (Ch: Tongde) County (also called Ba Dzong in common Tibetan parlance) in Tsolho (Ch: Hainan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo. The ‘pairing assistance’ program is a nation-wide initiative of dispatching party members and local cadres to gather information on rural residents and adopt preventative measures to combat sensitive political issues from gaining traction among the masses.
The program is, for all practical purposes, a means to monitor and control the thoughts and activities of local Tibetans in the name of poverty alleviation. It requires party members and cadres to stay at the homes of local Tibetan nomads and farmers for weeks conducting political education sessions and gathering sensitive information. It has existed since 2012 alongside a host of other so-called ecological and poverty alleviation programs that are designed to facilitate mass surveillance and thought control.