Population Transfer


International Law

Population Transfer has been described as:

... involv[ing] the movement of people as a consequence of political and/or economic processes in which the State government or State-authorized agencies participate.
(66)

Population transfer has been recognised in a report by UN Special Rapporteurs as "constitut[ing] a violation of basic principles of conventional and customary international and human rights law".(67)

Population transfer is also a specific violation of international humanitarian law ó that body of law which regulates the conduct of parties engaged in armed conflict. In accordance with international law, Tibet was in 1949 a fully independent state possessing all the attributes of statehood.(68) China's forceful invasion of Tibet thereby renders it a belligerent occupation and, as such, China is bound by the provisions of the Geneva Conventions which regulate the conduct of parties during international armed conflict. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "[t]he occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." As a signatory to this convention, the People's Republic of China is legally bound by its provisions.

Population transfer in Tibet also amounts to a war crime. The violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention is regarded as a "grave breach" of the Convention or its Protocol.(69) Article 85 paragraph 5 of Protocol 1 specifies that "grave breaches of these instruments shall be regarded as war crimes." The PRC accepted and agreed to be bound by Protocol 1 on September 14, 1983. Article 22 of the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind(70) similarly categorises the establishment of settlers in an occupied territory and changing the demographic composition of an occupied territory as "an exceptionally serious war crime".(71)

Increasing Migration

"To be flexible economically, we should open Tibet's door even wider and treat investors from the outside on an equal footing."
(Commentary broadcast by Tibet TV, November 26, 1997)

Official figures regarding the Chinese population in Tibet are scant and unreliable and China readily admits that the census in Tibetan regions excludes the large "floating" population - those individuals who enter Tibet independently seeking to benefit from economic opportunities and those brought in to work on special government-sponsored projects. The following figures and incidents are therefore necessarily limited to those which are reported and are no indication of the magnitude of the practice.

"TAR" officials claim there are just 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese working in Tibet and that in the whole period from the 1950s to 1997 only 110,000 to 120,000 people have gone to Tibet to work(72) but these figures are ridiculously short of the reports from independent organisations, tourists and Tibetan refugees. Chinese military personnel are also prominent residents of Tibet; on September 8, 1997, a senior government official in Tibet declared that PLA troops in Tibet numbered less than 200,000, although other estimates place the figure at 300,000.

The U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report for 1996, released on January 30, 1997, reports that in recent years there has been a substantial increase in the non-Tibetan population and that today in Lhasa approximately one-third of the resident population is Chinese. Other sources say there are 100,000 Chinese in the Tibetan capital, compared with 140,000 Tibetans,(73) while others put Lhasa's "floating population" at 200,000.(74) Some 30,000 Chinese settlers are estimated to be in Shigatse, Tibet's second biggest city, a figure equal to Shigatse's Tibetan population.(75)

According to a report by China's official news agency, Xinhua, on September 10, 1997, Lhasa now boasts "numerous modern buildings, 30 metre wide streets and a TV broadcasting tower" and Lhasa's 1951 urban area of three square kilometres "has been built into a modern city covering 51 square km with many modern factories, banks, hotels, shops and apartment complexes." Lhasa's mayor promised further expansion for 1997 including low-cost apartments and construction of the Lhasa section of the highway to link Tibet with China's Sichuan Province, due east of Lhasa.

The Three Gorges Project represents the latest and largest threat to date to the Tibetan population. In 1992 China approved plans to dam the Yangtze River and create the world's biggest hydro-electric power project. According to Mr Qi Lin, head of the resettlement for the project, in an announcement on March 5, 1997, the project will require the displacement of approximately 1.2 million people to make way for the reservoir, of which some 60,000 have already been moved. Mr Lin added that authorities in the two provinces affected - Sichuan and Hubei - were encouraging people to move to under-populated regions, which are generally impoverished areas such as Xinjiang, Tibet and Gansu.(76)

The entire project is due to be fully completed by 2009, and the problems of forced migration and ecological changes have been effectively swept aside by the promise of vast economic returns. Mr Lu Youmei, managing director of the Three Gorges Project Development Corp stated that "[t]he advantages of building this dam far outweigh the disadvantages".(77)

One indication of the potential magnitude of the Chinese population transfer may be gleaned from the staggering number of people travelling in and out of Tibet, and the concerted efforts by the PRC government to extend and upgrade transport links between Tibet and China. Improved transport links, especially a railway connection, could lead to an exponential increase in the number of new settlers entering Tibet. East Turkestan (Ch: Xinjiang Province) has experienced a huge increase in the numbers of new Chinese settlers since the rail link was opened, and it is feared that Tibet could be the victim of a similar fate.

In the "Tibet Government Work Report" of May 29, 1997,(78) the amount of "passenger transport" was reported to have reached 2.597 million persons, an increase of 9.5 per cent over the previous year (only 75,000 were overseas tourists). The report also stated that the Lhasa-Xian-Beijing air route had been restored, that the phase-one repair project for the Qinghai-Tibet highway was completed and that repair projects for the Sichuan-Tibet, Chang-Bang and Xinjiang-Tibet highways had "proceeded smoothly". The report declared, for the second year running, that full preparations should be made for building a railway into Tibet.

China openly admits the need for non-Tibetans to be brought into the territory for development projects. The development of five pillar industries - mining, forestry, light industry, tourism and building - are emphasised in the Work Report which stresses that this depends on attracting "private entrepeneurs from outside Tibet to set up industries in our region and give full play to their role in invigorating the circulation of commodities in urban and rural areas and enriching the lives of the masses."

According to the report, 658 cadres from Chinese provinces were sent to work in Tibet during 1996, compared to 500 sent in 1995. Fifty-six of the 62 large scale infrastructure projects initiated at the time of the Third Forum in 1994 have been completed.

Reports in 1997 from refugees from different parts of Tibet reveal a continuous stream of Chinese settlers brought in to Tibet to "develop" the region:

In December 1997, a new arrival reported that expansion on the airport in Lhoka, near Lhasa ("TAR"'s main airport), began in mid-February 1997. The people were told that this expansion was necessary to "accommodate the people who would be returning from Hong Kong". Fifteen trucks - each carrying 70 Chinese workers - arrived from China and houses were built as temporary shelters for them. Many Tibetans had to give up excellent agricultural land for the construction, receiving in return a certificate granting them permission to work as a road constructor. Some were given about 1,000 yuan (approx. US$120) as compensation. The source said, "I have strong feelings that the Chinese will stay back even after the construction is completed. A few years ago more than 300 Chinese came to work on a similar project in Gongkar County [Lhoka, "TAR"]. After one year the factory was closed down but all of the Chinese are still living in Gongkar; they have built homes, own shops, and some work in government offices. Now, with the transfer of more than 1,000 workers for the construction of the airport in Gongkar, the Tibetans are totally outnumbered by the Chinese."

Sources from Chamdo, "TAR", reported in May 1997 that a new hydro-power station was under construction at Chitang Shang, in Drayab Dzong, Chamdo, with around 300 workers including PLA soldiers and Pukung Tue (Chinese civilian construction labourers) involved in the digging.

In April 1997 it was reported that about 200 workers, of which 70 to 80 were local Tibetans and the rest Chinese, were working in Dzodha Lungpa goldmine, 20 km south of Karze Town, Karze "TAP", Kham (Ch: Sichuan Province).

Sources from Golok "TAP" in Amdo (Ch: Qinghai Province) reported that Chinese authorities had planned to bring 20,000 Chinese migrants into Golok in 1997 to work in the mines in Dornyi, a village in Machu County, Golok "TAP".

Human Rights Implications

The preservation of the Tibetan identity is perhaps the most critical and immediate threat faced by the Tibetan people today. The Tibetan culture is a rich and ancient mix of distinct language, religious practices, spiritual beliefs, dress, music and literature, arts and architecture, history and folk lore, medical and political systems, environmental respect, festivals and social customs. Where the physical introduction of people from another culture has the effect of marginalising the other, the cultural riches of the former will be irretrievably lost.

Since mid-1994, it is estimated that more than 500,000 new Chinese immigrants have been moved into Tibet to work on the 62 new industrial development projects initiated by Beijing. The population transfer that accompanies such project results in further marginalisation of the six million Tibetans who are now outnumbered by 7.5 million Chinese settlers.

These settlers receive preferential treatment in housing, employment, education and social services. One Tibetan refugee who arrived in India in May 1997 said that even in Tibet's remote western areas Chinese now come to trade for hides, an occupation traditionally carried out by Tibetans. Chinese have also started to pick herbal plants, also traditional Tibetan employment.

New schools and hospitals constructed in the "TAR" are primarily located in large towns and cities and are geared toward Chinese settlers. Development projects promise to wreak further havoc on Tibet's fragile ecological system, already seriously endangered by China's extensive deforestation and mining, and traditional Tibetan-style housing has been destroyed in favour of Communist-style blocks. It was recently reported that in 1940 there were 650 old buildings in Lhasa, in 1995 only 270 of these remained and in 1997 only 180 old buildings were in a preserved state.(79)

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Last updated: 1-Feb-98