China harasses Tibetan community for opposing ethnic unity law: Report

Wellington, Aug 16 (IANS) The Tibetan community is being spied on and harassed for protesting against China’s ethnic unity and progress law, a Tibetan man living in New Zealand told local media.

The man, Gaden, told Radio New Zealand (RNZ) that he is aware of incidents where people faced pressure from Chinese nationals.

“They don’t come … straight to us, they just take the photo from a distance,” he said.

“In its latest threat assessment, the SIS said diaspora community groups living in this country were being unfairly targeted by foreign states and proxies seeking to limit their democratic rights and freedoms,” Radio New Zealand reported.

Gaden described the ethnic unity law as an attempt to wipe out Tibetan culture from the world.

“In Tibet, you cannot hoist a Tibetan national flag. However, we do still have the prayer flags in front of the monastery, or people’s house or anywhere. Now, they have started to take it down, burn it down, stamp it on it,” he said.

Giden also referred to the recent incident where a man set himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in New York and died due to injuries from the incident.

He said that some Tibetans are setting themselves on fire in response to the ethnic unity law.

“He burned himself for the just cause of Tibetans, because we are all very frustrated,” Gaden said.

“We are very peaceful people. We don’t want to take up or cause any harm inside of China. We just need our own identity preserved.”

Recently, a report in the European Times said that the Chinese Communist Party’s policy in Tibet demonstrates an example of empire-building through assimilation. However, history indicates that rigid, forced assimilation plans ultimately face systemic limits.

“The sweep of history reminds us of a simple truth: no empire, however mighty, is permanent. Rome, the Ottomans, the British Raj; all believed their dominion eternal, only to discover that power is cyclical, not absolute. Today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exercises seemingly unassailable control over the Tibetan Plateau, integrating it through modernisation, surveillance, and demographic engineering,” Khedroob Thondup, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama’s nephew, mentioned in the report in the European Times.

–IANS

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