April 12th 2002
Bush administration is not yet fully operational so this year reports are mixed bag. It seems that there is no clear guidance in what direction they want to go. All our complaints from a year ago were left unaddressed except the one regarding conscripts in FRY. They finally decided to remove that anomaly for good. Persecution of those who distribute bibles in China is also included this year but that is not surprise thanks to Bush's concern publicly expressed to Chinese officials. Most of the things from previous year appear again so you should check Human Rights 2000 first because only new issues not covered last year will be discussed here.
FRY
Many thought that Kostunica and DOS would bring changes to Serbia but as FS Net predicted that was realistic. You can read more in Boycott 2000. Delivering Milosevic to the Hague tribunal is the only notable exception but dozens of other war criminals are left untouched. Thanks to Kostunica on March 31st 2002 American aid has been suspended thanks to his stubbornness in accepting extraditions to the Hague tribunal.
Kostunica declared himself President of Yugoslavia that night and 2 days later Milosevic conceded electoral defeat.
This is very important and shows that America understand who Kostunica is, self declared dictator who forced Milosevic to concede at gunpoint and arrested election commission in charge of elections in 2000.
In October 2000, the Government abolished the Law on Public Information, which former President Milosevic used to silence the independent media during the Kosovo war. However, no law to replace it had been enacted by year's end.
Academic freedom was respected; however, although it was not enforced, the 1998 Universities Law, which curtailed academic freedom under the Milosevic regime by allowing the Government to appoint rectors and governing boards and hire and fire deans of faculties, who could in turn hire and fire professors, remained in effect.
No changes here.
In April the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs banned the import of Jehovah's Witnesses' religious literature, stating that the literature would have a negative impact on children and youth.
China bans distribution of bibles and Serbia bans Jehovah's Witnesses' religious literature. They are not some crazy religious cult, they believe the Bible is God's Word. It is of vital importance to them that their beliefs be based on the Bible and not on mere human speculations or religious creeds. Nothing dangerous here.
In March the VJ announced its intention to introduce Serbian Orthodox chaplains into its military units. By year's end, the VJ had not yet decided whether Catholic priests and Muslim imams also would be represented in the Army Chaplaincy. According to the Keston Institute, some representatives of minority religious groups and NGO's expressed concern that by favoring the majority religion the VJ was not protecting equal religious rights for all soldiers.
This is another attempt of Kostunica, who BTW controls army, to impose Orthodox fundamentalism in Serbia.
Indicted war criminal Milan Milutinovic remained President of the Republic of Serbia.
No comment.
In May a 2-day international conference was held in Belgrade to address the issues of truth and reconciliation. Concurrently, President Kostunica appointed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along the lines of similar initiatives planned in Bosnia and in Croatia. One of its members, Professor Vojin Dimitrijevic, a prominent human rights activist, resigned from the Commission, expressing doubts that it will ever be a functioning body. Since the conference, the Commission has failed to establish a staff or a budget. It has not yet made any contribution to "truth and reconciliation."
He wanted to manipulate this commission but he failed thanks to people who care about the truth not politics like professor Vojin Dimitrijevic.
Societal discrimination against Roma was widespread. For example, in Sabac, in western Serbia, Roma were barred from using a municipal swimming pool that is owned by the president of the local branch of the Serbian Radical Party.
Nazis like Kostunica and his party members never liked Roma much.
On May 8, in Subotica, Vojvodina, unknown assailants attacked and beat a Jewish community leader for the second time (a similar attack had occurred 3 weeks earlier). The victim was a lawyer who represented opposition members under the Milosevic government.
And Jews are usual target in fascist countries like Serbia.
Russia
Putin continues to run his police state with FSB. Freedom of speech is almost nonexistent while those who oppose him live in exile like Gusinsky and Berezovsky. Slaughter of Chechen people continues and Russian economy is bottom beater.
According to Human Rights Watch, no one has been held accountable for the extrajudicial killings of 130 civilians in Alkyan-Yurt, Staropromyslovskiy, and Novye Aldi in 1999 and 2000. In February a mass grave containing approximately 50 bodies, including the bodies of several women, was discovered near the federal military base in Khankala. Some of the bodies showed that the victims had been shot in the back of the head and had their hands bound. Two of the corpses had ears cut off. Relatives identified several bodies as belonging to family members who had been detained by units of the federal forces the previous year, at times when there was no military activity in the area. Military sources and the Chechen procurator's office stated that the gravesite was more than a year old (predating the establishment of the federal military base), and that the bodies belonged to Chechen rebels who had been fighting among themselves; however, local forensic experts determined that the corpses were less than a year old.
At least we know that Mladic and Karadzic are in Chechnya helping FSB.
There were no developments in the 1999 killing of St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Mikhail Manevich. In the case of the St. Petersburg Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Gennadiy Tuganov, killed in 1999, police completed their investigation but failed to identify who hired the killer. In the case of St. Petersburg legislative assembly Deputy Viktor Novoselov, killed in October 1999, police arrested four persons--three of whom were described as professional killers--but had no information on who hired the killers. At year's end, a trial date had been set for January 2002 in the St. Petersburg city court.
In May the FSB stated that it was extending by another 6 months its investigation of the 1998 killing of Galina Starovoytova, a prominent Duma deputy; however, family members and some activists expressed skepticism at that the Government was investigating the killing fully.
"No development" is synonym for Putin's government. Let's mention here that assassination of Slavko Curuvija in Belgrade in 1999 is also unsolved as well as disappearance of former Serbian president Ivan Stambolic. Bush administration should take a close look of Starovoitova assassination because it happened after she accused fascist Zhirinovsky of being financed by "Axis of Evil" countries.
There were reports of government involvement in politically motivated disappearances in Chechnya; however, there were fewer reports of kidnapings then in previous years. The NGO Memorial claimed that federal military forces have detained a total of 15,000 persons from Chechnya. Many of these persons disappeared, but most were released, often after their relatives paid a bribe. Memorial estimated that the number of individuals unaccounted for was somewhere between several hundred and a thousand. In March Human Rights Watch released a report titled "The Dirty War in Chechnya: Forced Disappearance, Torture and Summary Executions," which detailed the cases of at least 52 individuals who were in the custody or government authorities when they disappeared. Human Rights Watch believes that the total number of persons who disappeared is much higher. The mutilated bodies of some of those who disappeared later were found in unmarked graves in Chechnya, and showed signs of torture. According to one NGO, Belyy Platok, some federal forces also kidnaped children in Chechnya for ransom
Disappearances in Chechnya continue but what is new here is that FSB is kidnapping Chechen children for ransom. The latest news from Chechnya:
There were no developments in the ongoing criminal investigation into the disappearance of former speaker of the Chechen parliament and former field commander Ruslan Alikhadzhiyev. In May 2000, Alikhadzhiyev allegedly was detained in Shali by federal forces. In September 2000, the news agency Agence France Presse, citing sources close to the Chechen leadership, reported that Alikhadzhiyev had died of a heart attack in the Lefortovo pretrial detention facility in Moscow. Those sources claimed that federal authorities officially had notified the detainee's relatives of his death; however, soon afterward the news daily Izvestiya reported that Alikhadzhiyev never had been brought to Lefortovo. In October the news daily Moskovskiye novosti reported that there had been no developments in the case, despite a criminal investigation opened by the Shali regional procurator in 2000.
So much for Putin's respect of speaker of the Chechen parliament. Every Chechen is terrorist for him.
The Constitution prohibits torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment or punishment; however, there were credible reports that some law enforcement personnel used torture regularly to coerce confessions from suspects, and that the Government does not hold most officials accountable for such actions.
Prisoners' rights groups, as well as other human rights groups, documented numerous cases in which law enforcement and correctional officials tortured and beat detainees and suspects. Human rights groups describe the practice of torture as widespread. In 2000 human rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated that 50 percent of prisoners with whom he spoke claimed to have been tortured. Numerous press reports indicated that the police frequently strike persons with little or no provocation or use excessive force to subdue arrestees. Reports by refugees, NGO's, and the press suggested a pattern of beatings, arrests, and extortion by police against persons with dark skin, or who appeared to be from the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Africa. Press reports and human rights groups indicated that police in some parts of the country also used beatings and torture as part of investigative procedures as well. Police also continued to harass defense lawyers, including through beatings and arrests, and intimidated witnesses.
What is wrong with S&M? That is Putin's way of life.
Torture by police officers usually occurs within the first few hours or days of arrest and usually takes one of four forms: beatings with fists, batons, or other objects; asphyxiation using gas masks or bags (sometimes filled with mace); electric shocks; or suspension of body parts (e.g. suspending a victim from the wrists, which are tied together behind the back). Allegations of torture are difficult to substantiate because of lack of access by medical professionals and because the techniques used often leave few or no permanent physical traces.
FSB torture experts are very sophisticated.
For example, according to Human Rights Watch and press reports, in February 2000, Russian forces executed at least 60 civilians in Aldi and Chernorechiye, suburbs of Groznyy. The perpetrators reportedly raped some of the victims, extorted money, and later set many of the houses on fire to destroy evidence. There were no reports of an investigation into or prosecutions in connection to these actions by year's end.
Sounds familiar to Bosnia.
The Government owns approximately 150 of the 550 television stations in the country and indirectly influenced private media companies through partial state ownership of the gas monopoly Gazprom and the oil company Lukoil, which in turn own large shares of media companies.
They want to promote and advertise natural resources of Russia. What is wrong with oil and gas compoanies buying TV stations? Putin said that this is exactle the same as with Disney buying ABC!? I fail to see any similarity because Disney is privately owned entertainment company.
At times local government officials actively restricted freedom of the press, particularly during election periods. In March Nizhniy Novgorod's regional head administrator Sergey Vasin enlisted the aid of local police to turn off the local television transmitter, because he claimed that he had been denied legally mandated access to airwaves during his campaign.
He must be a big fan of Saddam Hussein.
In June Irkutsk law enforcement officials confiscated all copies of Vostochnosibirskiye vesti, reportedly the only newspaper that had criticized Governor Boris Govorin, who was up for reelection in July; this was the 19th confiscation of the newspaper since its founding in 2000. The reasons for these confiscations are not known.
This one is for the Guinness Book of World Records.
uring the year, authorities harassed and abused Olga Kitova, a correspondent for Belgorodskaya Pravda and a member of the Belgorod regional parliament, because of her reporting on regional government officials. In January the Union of Journalists revoked her first prize award for investigative reporting. On March 21, the Belgorod Oblast procurator opened a criminal case against her, charging her with "insult and violence" against state officials. Subsequently 10 police officers detained her outside her home, beat her, and took her to a hospital for treatment. The police claimed she was arrested for failing to respond to a summons; however, as a member of the regional parliament, she legally was immune to questioning or arrest on criminal charges. On May 22, police arrested Kitova again; the arresting officers presented neither identification nor a warrant for her arrest. She was taken to a temporary holding cell in the district police station where she apparently suffered a heart attack. After a dispute between two doctors regarding her fitness for transfer to the pretrial detention center, she was taken to the city hospital and treated for acute hypertension and heart ailments. On May 28, the Western District Court of Belgorod ruled that her arrest was unlawful on procedural grounds, but the procurator successfully appealed the decision in June. On June 8, the hospital discharged her. On September 3, Kitova's third trial began but was recessed on October 26 because of her ill health. In December Kitova received a 21/2 year suspended sentence on the libel charges and her lawyers filed an appeal with the Supreme Court. She remained free pending trial at year's end.
Only in Russia! How do you revoke prize for journalism? Read letter addressed to Putin from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) here. Freimut Duve from OSCE says:
The harassment of Olga Kitova is one of the most egregious cases I have come across in my now more than three years as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
His report in PDF format is available from OSCE web site here. Amnesty International is also shocked by this case. More from them here.
On May 17, Vladimir Kirsanov, a local newspaper editor from Kurgan, was reported missing after his bloodstained documents were found on the bank of the Tobol river in Kurgan. Many of Kirsanov's colleagues believe he was killed because of his investigative reporting on corruption among oblast officials, and because of his reported conflict with oblast governor Oleg Bogomolov. According to the newspaper Versiya, on May 23, the Kurgan oblast procurator's office opened a criminal investigation, which was ongoing at year's end; representatives of the Glasnost Foundation and Reporters Without Borders assisted with the investigation.
On May 17, Vladimir Kirsanov, a local newspaper editor from Kurgan, was reported missing after his bloodstained documents were found on the bank of the Tobol river in Kurgan. Many of Kirsanov's colleagues believe he was killed because of his investigative reporting on corruption among oblast officials, and because of his reported conflict with oblast governor Oleg Bogomolov. According to the newspaper Versiya, on May 23, the Kurgan oblast procurator's office opened a criminal investigation, which was ongoing at year's end; representatives of the Glasnost Foundation and Reporters Without Borders assisted with the investigation.
On September 19, Eduard Markevich, editor of Novyye Reft, was shot and killed. Colleagues claimed that Markevich had received threatening phone calls prior to the shooting, and colleagues and media advocacy groups believe that Markevich was killed because of his investigative reporting. Markevich often had criticized local authorities and law enforcement, and on September 16, he participated in local parliamentary campaigns. In 2000 authorities detained him for 10 days after the local procurator charged him with defamation because of an article he wrote questioning the propriety of a government contract.
Previous murders of journalists still unsolved included the September 2000 killing of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Iskander Khatloni. At the time of his death, Khatloni had been investigating alleged human rights abuses by the federal military in Chechnya; the July 2000 killing of Igor Domnikov, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta; and the July 2000 killing of Sergey Novikov, president of independent radio station Vesna.
List of tortured and killed journalists in Russia never ends. Status of women in Russia:
In November an MVD official estimated that on average, there are more than 250,000 violent crimes against women annually; however, government officials and NGO's agreed that such crimes usually are not reported.
Prostitution is not a crime
Some firms ask applicants for employment to complete a form including the abbreviation "VBO," a Russian-language abbreviation for "possibility of close relations," to which the applicant is expected to reply "yes" or "no." There is no law that prohibits sexual harassment and women have no recourse when sexually harassed.
While there are no official statistics available, government officials estimated that of the 8.1 percent of the workforce unemployed in late September, 70 percent were women.
Women continue to report cases in which they are paid less for the same work that male colleagues perform.
Pedophiles in FSB enjoy their work in Chechnya:
Reportedly Russian troops in Chechnya placed Chechen boys ages 13 and older in filtration camps where some are beaten and raped reportedly by guards, soldiers, or other inmates. The women's action group "White Kerchief" (Belyy platok) reported that some federal forces engaged in the kidnaping of children in Chechnya for ransom.
Slavery is a way of life in Russia:
Women reportedly were trafficked from Russia to European Union countries, the Middle East, Asia, and the U.S. For example, reportedly 15,000 women and children were trafficked into "sex slavery" in China.
There are reports of children being kidnaped or purchased from parents, relatives, or orphanages for sexual abuse, child pornography, and the harvesting of body parts.
This is really sick! Harvesting body parts of children!?
China
Communist terror in China intensified in 2001 while "strike-hard" policy sent thousands to death by execution. Membership in WTO and 2008 Olympics in Beijing didn't soften CCP at all. Religion is almost forbidden in China and those who excercise their religious rights are abrutaly persecuted:
Several leaders of the unregistered South China Church were arrested in July and subsequently sentenced to death; some of those sentences were suspended and some were appealed. Also in July, authorities arrested Hong Kong businessman Li Guangqiang and charged him with smuggling for bringing Bibles into the country. Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process.
No progress on Laogais:
According to international press reports, over 200,000 persons are serving sentences, not subject to judicial review, in reeducation-through-labor camps. Many thousands more remain incarcerated in prisons. The Government denied that it holds any political or religious prisoners, and asserted that authorities detained persons not for their political or religious views, but because they violated the law.
"Strike-Hard" policy:
In April the Government began a national "strike-hard" campaign against crime. However, the campaign also has targeted some dissidents, separatists, and underground church members. The campaign has been vigorously carried out in Xinjiang, where those deemed to be "splittists" by the Government are targeted. The "strike-hard" campaign has been characterized by roundups of suspects and mass sentencing rallies. By the third quarter of the year, domestic press stories indicated that over 2,000 persons had been executed as part of the campaign. The Government regarded the number of death sentences it carried out as a state secret.
According to domestic press reports, on April 11 in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, 23 suspects were sentenced to death in front of 5,000 spectators. Seven of the condemned were immediately taken to an execution ground where they were shot.
Public executions are favored by CCP!? Will they continue with them during Olympics in 2008?
The human rights situation in Tibet remained poor, as the Government continued its campaign to reeducate monks and nuns with sympathies to the Dalai Lama.
Everyone must be reeducated by CCP! Everyone must think the same way CCP leadership think!
Forced labor in prisons and reeducation-through-labor camps is common. At one camp in the western part of the country, inmates are forced to work up to 16 hours per day breaking rocks or making bricks, according to credible reports. There were several deaths from overwork, poor medical care, and beatings by guards in 2000.
What happened to 8 hour of work guaranteed by communists world wide? This looks more like Hitler's concentration camps.
According to researchers, the country has 20 "ankang" institutions, directly administered by the Ministry of Public Security, in which dissidents and activists are housed with mentally ill patients. The regulations for committing a person into an ankang facility are not clear. Credible reports indicate a number of political or trade union dissidents, "underground" religious believers, and FLG adherents are incarcerated in such facilities.
All who don't believe in communism are insane and need emergency psychiatric treatment!
The campaign against the China Democracy Party, a would-be opposition party that began in 1998, continued during the year. Scores of CDP leaders, activists, and members have been arrested, detained, or confined as a result of this campaign. Since December 1998, at least 30 core leaders of the CDP have been given severe punishments on subversion charges. In what some experts have described as an attempt by authorities to tarnish the public image of the democracy movement, officials have accused a number of democracy activists of soliciting prostitutes, distributing pornographic videos, petty theft, or other crimes unrelated to their political activities. In March the vice-chairman of the CDP's Hubei province branch, Lu Xiaolan, was detained as he tried to organize a CDP meeting in Wuhan. In late December 2000, Shanghai-based Cai Guihua and Fu Shenping chose to go into exile after being harassed by the police. The two each had served more than 1 year in prison for supporting the CDP in Shanghai. In December 2000, CDP activists Wang Zechen and Wang Wenjiang reportedly were sentenced in Anshan to 6 years and 4 years in prison, respectively, on charges of subverting state power. The two were arrested in June 1999.
Democracy is still the number one enemy of the state in China.
The conviction rate in criminal cases approaches 90 percent, and trials generally are little more than sentencing hearings.
It makes you wonder about those 10% who are not convicted. Who are they and what was the reason for theri release.
In recent years, credible reports have alleged that organs from some executed prisoners were removed and sold. In June 2000, Wang Guoqi, a former employee of the Paramilitary Police General Division Hospital in Tianjin, testified before the U.S. Congress that he had harvested skin and corneas from more that 100 executed prisoners. Wang testified that he had become disturbed by the practice after taking part in the removal of skin from a still-living prisoner in 1995.
This is really sick! Animal lovers often complained about animals being skinned but what about skinning live people?
Authorities monitor telephone conversations, facsimile transmissions, e-mail, and Internet communications. Authorities also open and censor domestic and international mail. The security services routinely monitor and enter the residences and offices of persons dealing with foreigners to gain access to computers, telephones, and fax machines. Government security organs monitor and sometimes restrict contact between foreigners and citizens. All major hotels have a sizable internal security presence.
Just like in those "good" old Stalinist days of U.S.S.R.
It is illegal for unmarried women to bear children.
CCP must be very conservative party. They don't like single mothers.
Various sources report that thousands of FLG adherents have been arrested, detained, and imprisoned, and that approximately 200 or more FLG adherents have died in detention since 1999; many of their bodies reportedly bore signs of severe beatings or torture or were cremated before relatives could examine them.
This is an update on Falun Gong practitioners and freedom of religion. Death will set you free and send you to your god.
Pastor Li Dexian was detained in April 2000 for 15 days, during which time he was forced into a crouch for 3 days, unable to sleep or use toilet facilities, with his wrists and ankles manacled together.
Chinese torture methods are legendary but this one is new and original. This year torture award goes to China.
The Government does not permit independent domestic NGO's to monitor or to comment on human rights conditions.
It makes you wonder what else is there to report? China is more like a one big horror show open 24 hours.
According to some estimates by experts, there are 4 to 10 million commercial sex workers in the country.
There were reports that women from Burma, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, and Russia were trafficked into the country either to work in the sex trade or to be forced to marry Chinese men. A small number of persons from Laos are trafficked to China. Vietnamese women are trafficked to China for sexual exploitation and arranged marriages. Burmese adults are trafficked to China. Trafficking of North Korean women into the country to become brides or to work in the sex industry reportedly is common in the northeastern part of the country. Many such women, unable to speak Chinese, are virtual prisoners. Some if not many of the Korean women are sold against their will to rural men--in both ethnic Korean and ethnic Han areas--who have difficulty finding wives in their home villages. According to press reports, North Korean brides were sold for the equivalent of between $38 and $150. Others end up working as prostitutes.
Very impressive but what happened to communist principles of equality for women and their liberation.
Women who seek a divorce face the prospect of losing their housing since government work units allot housing to men when couples marry.
No half of everything for wives, just half of nothing.
According to the most recent figures, women made up approximately 70 percent of the country's illiterate population.
Same Russian treatment for women in China.
According to some estimates, the migration of ethnic Han into Xinjiang in recent decades has caused the Han-Uighur ratio in Urumqi to shift from 20 to 80 to 80 to 20, and is a source of Uighur resentment. By some estimates, 250,000 Han have moved into the region annually in the last few years.
Just what Stalin did in U.S.S.R.
The Government has not ratified ILO convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. The Government also has not made a public statement on the eradication of such labor or established a national program with that objective.
What about exploitation of children in communism?
Tibet
The Chinese Government strictly controls access to and information about Tibet, making it difficult to determine accurately the scope of human rights abuses. There were reports of the death of political prisoners as well as the imprisonment and abuse or torture of nuns and monks accused of political activism.
There are many credible reports that prisoners are tortured and mistreated. Authorities use electric shocks, suspension in painful positions, and other forms of torture or abuse. TIN reported severe beatings of several nuns serving long prison sentences, including Ngawang Choezom and Phuntsog Nyidrol, imprisoned in 1989 for singing proindependence songs.
Even singing is prohibited in Tibet. They must have put Gene Kelly on their black list as well.
Ngawang Choephel, a Tibetan ethnomusicologist sentenced in 1996 to 18 years in prison on charges of espionage, was incarcerated in a facility near Chengdu in Sichuan Province throughout the year. According to government officials, he suffered from a variety of ailments, including digestive, urinary, kidney, and liver problems.
No music too!
At least three staff members of the Gyatso Children's Home, a Lhasa orphanage that was closed by officials in September 1999, remained in detention, reportedly charged with "endangering national security." No further information was available on the details of these cases.
This is new and very original! Orphans endanger national security!? Wow!
Reportedly 72 percent of female detainees are nuns, and approximately 74 percent of male prisoners are monks.
This is unique because no other country has similar ratio for those imprisoned for various crimes. Religion is not crime BTW.
Chinese law mandates that prisoners can be required to work up to 12 hours per day, with one rest day every 2 weeks (Article 53 of the Statute of Reform Through Labor). However, some refugees report that work requirements are more onerous than those set forth in the law. At Drapchi prison male prisoners reportedly work in vegetable fields and in factories at the prison. Female prisoners clean toilets and also are involved in tailoring, cleaning, or spinning and sorting wool to be used in the manufacture of carpets and sweaters. According to Human Rights Watch, some Tibetan prisoners are required to work beyond their terms of imprisonment. Some prisoners in pretrial detention also are forced to work.
Work will set you free or simply kill you just like it did to millions of people in Hitler's concentration camps.
The ban on the public display of photographs of the Dalai Lama continued, and such pictures were not readily available except illegally in many parts of the TAR.
I would understand that nude or obscene picture are banned but this is a bit extreme.
According to regulations posted at the entrances of many monasteries, monks are required to be "patriotic," and authorities require monks to: Sign a declaration agreeing to reject independence for Tibet; reject Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the boy recognized by the Dalai Lama as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama; reject and denounce the Dalai Lama; recognize the unity of China and Tibet; and not listen to the Voice of America. Monks who refused these terms risked expulsion from their monasteries; others were forced to leave their monasteries after failing to pass exams on these topics or being found "politically unqualified;" others leave "voluntarily" rather than denounce the Dalai Lama.
Not to listen VOA!?
Tibetans are reportedly discriminated against in employment in some urban occupations; ethnic Han are hired preferentially for many jobs and receive greater pay for the same work. Ethnic Tibetans reportedly are fired discriminatorily from some jobs.
Why wonder about their independence goal then?
Prostitution is a growing problem in Tibet, as it is elsewhere in the country, according to experts working in the region. Hundreds of brothels operate openly in Lhasa. Up to 10,000 commercial sex workers may be employed in Lhasa alone. Much of the prostitution occurs at sites owned by the Party, the Government, or the military. Most prostitutes in Tibet are ethnic Han women, mainly from Sichuan.
Prostitution is important part of communist doctrine.
Chinese officials assert that 95 percent of Tibet's officially registered population is Tibetan, with Han and other ethnic groups making up the remaining 5 percent.
So much about CCP claims that Tibet is part of China.
FS Net Editor