RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – 2022 was a year full of arrest, torture and oppression for Buddhists in Tibet.
Under, as Tibet Post reported, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Tibetans self-immolated to protest against the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Tibet, Chinese authorities arbitrarily arrested, detained, beaten, tortured and convicted Tibetans, Tibetan monasteries and schools were closed and the Buddha statue was destroyed, Tibetans were treated ruthlessly in the midst of a pandemic in 2022.
The annual human rights reports for 2022 by Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and the Congressional Executive Commission on China, etc., show that the human rights situation has worsened with the absence of basic rights, including the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to work and education. And the Freedom House report ranks Tibet among the least free countries in the world.
Here are the top ten stories about Tibetans subjected to the Chinese authorities, who are innocently imprisoned, arrested, detained, disappeared, tortured for simply exercising their basic human rights, and those who have self-immolated against the Chinese government’s oppressive policies towards Tibetans:
- Tibetan well-known young singer Tsewang Norbu has self-immolated in front of the Potala Palace, the resident of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Tibet, to protest against China’s oppressive policies and inhuman treatment of Tibetans, and sadly passed away.
- A senior man in Tibet carried out a self-immolation in March 2022 in front of a Chinese police station located near the Kirti monastery in protest against the repressive policies of the Chinese government and the inhumane treatment of people in Tibet.
- Chinese authorities sentenced six Tibetans, including writers, environmentalist, activists and former political prisoners, to between four and 14 years in prison for allegedly “inciting separatism and “endangering state security”, after they had been held in detention by Chinese police for over a year.
- Chinese authorities have detained at least 10 Tibetans from Draggo County, Kham region of eastern Tibet, who have expressed their refusal to destroy the Buddha statue or to cooperate with the Chinese authorities in their removal.
- Tenzin Tharpa, Lhamo’s cousin, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 2020, but his conviction was only recently revealed, due to the crackdown on Tibetans and the tight control of information flows abroad.
- Chinese authorities in Lhasa arrested a Tibetan man from Nagchu, central Tibet, for allegedly possessing photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, on his neck and in his car, after authorities searched his car in Lhasa on August 12, 2022.
- Thupten Lodoe, a Tibetan writer from Sershul County, Dzachuka, eastern Tibet, was recently sentenced to four and six month’s imprisonment by the Chinese authorities over his writings that published on Chinese social media.
- Chinese authorities arrested four young Tibetan women from Dhartsedho County in eastern Tibet for allegedly taking part in a protest against the Chinese government’s “zero-covid policy” restrictions in the city of Chengdu in recent days, as part of a massive demonstration in 16 different cities across China.
- Tibetans face a very difficult situation under China’s “zero-Covid” policy, where they are forcibly removed from their homes and placed in so-called isolation centers, where they are given leftover and spoiled food and no one takes care of them, where some are beaten and tortured
As China moves forward with the construction of the “Sichuan-Tibet Railway” and enters eastern Tibet, the environmental damage is enormous, the premeditated assault on Tibetan culture and the drilling of hundreds of tunnels under the mountains is systematic, including the cutting of sacred mountains, the deforestation and pollution of rivers providing drinking water is ongoing.