CHINA – UN committee against discrimination censors NGO’s report
17 August 2009 2:02 am

To
publish the report by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
(TCHRD), the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination gave the condition to remove words like "China's
occupation of Tibet". The report was presented to the committee for its
session in August 2009. Below is the statement by TCHRD, issued on 7
August.
To
publish the report by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
(TCHRD), the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination gave the condition to remove words like "China's
occupation of Tibet". The report was presented to the committee for its
session in August 2009. Below is the statement by TCHRD, issued on 7
August.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) welcomes the 75th
session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD). Today, the experts examine the 10th, 11th,
12th and 13th state report of the People's Republic of
China (PRC). 

While the TCHRD expresses its full faith in the CERD experts, the Centre is
disappointed at the selective censorship of non-governmental organisation
reports by the Secretariat of the CERD  serviced by the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). TCHRD's alternate report to the CERD was
subjected to conditions to be made public on the official web page of the CERD.
The Secretariat demanded the removal of the phrases "China's occupation of
Tibet", which occurs six times in the report, and "cultural genocide" in the
concluding paragraph.

The Secretariat's directive is unacceptable to the TCHRD as it deems that
not only would it be a tremendous factual error but also acceptance of indirect
diktats of the PRC. It is universally accepted that Tibet is a land under
foreign occupation and it is also a universally accepted truth that
discrimination is inherent in colonized land. The uprising by the Tibetan
people in spring 2008 in the so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region" and other
Tibetan areas under the present day China clearly revealed that systematic and
institutional discrimination is one of the biggest factors behind the uprising.
China's occupation of Tibet is at the root cause of the systematic violations
of human rights currently taking place in Tibet.

The TCHRD's report focuses on the denial of the following rights on the
basis of the racial distinction of Tibetan as a people and as a land; denial of
Civil and Political Rights, Environment and Resource Exploitation, Forced
Evictions and the survival of the Tibetan nomadic lifestyles and Discrimination
in Education. It is interesting to note that while the Secretariat bars the
TCHRD report, it ironically published a report by a Chinese government NGO,
Research Centre for Ethnic Issues in China, on the official web page. 

The TCHRD considers the directive by the CERD Secretariat as a regression of
rights of the civil society groups including the TCHRD. The Centre maintains
its position that Tibet is a land under foreign occupation and hence would not
be able to comply with the directive. However, the Centre extends its full
faith in the CERD experts competence and authority in a just examination of the
state party report of the People's Republic of China.