UN report highlights worsening human rights situation of Tibetans

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which released its ‘Concluding Observations’ in its third periodic review of China in its recent report, underscored a number of issues related to human rights of Tibetan people under the Chinese government which require serious and urgent attention of the international community, Tibet Press reported. These issues include a serious onslaught on Tibetan culture and religion, forced relocation of nomad communities, poor treatment and exploitation of Tibetan culture, and brainwashing and forced assimilation of Tibetan children through Chinese Communist Party run boarding schools, as per the Tibet Press report. Freedom House, a global watchdog of human freedoms around the world released its report titled “Freedom in the World 2023 Report” on March 9 ranked Tibet as “World’s least-free country” along with South Sudan and Syria. The report has been successively released for the third time after similar Freedom House reports in 2021 and 2022 that Tibet has won the dubious distinction of being ranked at the bottom of community of nations. In its own method of grading political rights and civil liberties, the organization gave minus 2 marks out of a possible 40 for possible rights and 3 marks out of 60 for civil liberties in Tibet which places the region with a total score of 1 out of 100, as per the Tibet Press report. Freedom House in its report found that both Chinese and Tibetans living in Tibet lack basic rights. However, the Chinese authorities are particularly rigorous in suppressing any signs of dissent among Tibetans, including manifestations of Tibetan religious beliefs and cultural identity, as per the news report. Reacting to the report of Freedom House, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), a prominent Tibet advocacy group in the USA and Europe, said, “After more than six decades of illegal occupation, China has turned Tibet into the world’s least-free country..