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New social engineering campaign forcably relocates 250,000 Tibetans to homes bearing flag of China |
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Kentucky ~~ Sunday May 6 2007
Forced relocations tighten China's grip on Tibet
COMMUNISTS ALSO HOPE TO NAME THE NEXT DALAI LAMA
By Tim Johnson (MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS)
ZENGSHOL, Tibet -- In a sweeping campaign that recalls the socialist engineering of an earlier era, the Chinese government has relocated some 250,000 Tibetans -- nearly one-tenth of the population -- from scattered rural hamlets to new "socialist villages," ordering them to build new housing largely at their own expense and without their consent.
The government calls the year-old project the "comfortable housing program." Its stated aim is to present a more modern face for the ancient region that China has controlled since 1950.
It claims that the new housing on main roads, sometimes only a mile from previous homes, will enable small farmers and herders to have access to schools and jobs, as well as better health care and hygiene.
But the broader aim seems to be remaking Tibet -- a region with its own culture, language and religious traditions -- in order to have firmer political control over its population. It comes as China prepares for an influx of millions of tourists in the run-up to next year's Summer Olympic Games.
A vital element in the strategy is to displace a revered leader, the Dalai Lama, now 71, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for advocating resistance to the communist government. The government hopes to name a successor after he dies. In the meantime it has opened the gates of Tibet to greater numbers of ethnic Han Chinese, and has tightened control of religious activity.
It's pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into road-building and development projects in Tibet, boosting the economy, maintaining a large military presence and keeping close tabs on the citizenry through a vast security apparatus of cameras and informants on urban streets and in the monasteries.
Some Tibetans, including farmers interviewed in the village of Zengshol, say they're happy to be in better quarters than their primitive, ancestral homes of mud brick. In other villages, Chinese escorts prevented a visiting reporter from speaking with residents.
Other than a state media account that proclaimed that "beaming smiles" were "fixed on the faces of farmers and herders" as they built and moved into new housing in what it called "socialist villages," the Chinese news media have given almost no coverage to the forced relocation.
Foreign reporters, under tight strictures that largely prevent them from traveling to Tibet except on once-a-year trips under Foreign Ministry guidance, risk being removed from the region if they openly interview people. This report was prepared while undertaking tourism in Tibet.
The first critical account of the remaking of the Tibetan landscape came from New York-based Human Rights Watch. It quoted Tibetans who had fled the country, trekking across the Himalayan mountains into Nepal.
On several trips outside Lhasa last month, a McClatchy reporter traversed 800 miles of roads and witnessed the forced transformation of the countryside.
In the new settlements, cookie-cutter houses, striking in their uniformity, lined the roads at regular intervals. The settlements varied in size but were mostly towns, larger than the abandoned villages. The red flag of China flew atop every house.
In Zengshol, the faces weren't exactly beaming, but the farmers were reluctant to voice complaints.
Some experts say the relocations have lifted up the impoverished peasantry and could bring prosperity.
"It's created a building boom," said Melvyn C. Goldstein, a social anthropologist and expert on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "I think it's phenomenally successful, more than I would've believed."
Human Rights Watch's witnesses told a different story.
Peasants must take out loans of several thousand dollars to pay for the houses, which cost an average of $6,000, even though annual rural incomes hover around $320 in the deeply impoverished region.
"None of those interviewed reported being given the right to challenge or refuse participation in the campaign," the advocacy group said.
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