Seven years in Tibet: 2 million 'displaced' by Chinese relocation policy

More than two million people have been displaced in Tibet over the past seven years as China operates a policy of forced “mass rehousing and relocation” against the indigenous population, according to a human rights report.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch on Thursday called on Beijing to end the practice, which it said upended lives by forcibly relocating ethnic Tibetans and leaving them with insufficient compensation, sub-par housing and lack of help in finding employment.

Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson said the Tibetan population was being reorganised on a scale “unprecedented in the post-Mao era” as Chinese authorities attempted to further clamp down on the region’s separatist movement and tighten control over rural communities.

“Tibetans have no say in the design of policies that are radically altering their way of life, and - in an already highly repressive context - no ways to challenge them,” Ms Richardson said.

The report said that more than two million Tibetans had been relocated since 2006, as well as hundreds of thusands of nomadic herders on the eastern reaches of the Tibetan plateau such as Qinghai province.

China immediately rejected the findings, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying she hoped the human rights group could “remove their coloured glasses” regarding Beijing’s development policy. She suggested that external critics did not have “a correct understanding of China’s ethnic and religious policies and respect for the Chinese people’s chosen path of development”.

Tibet has been ruled from Beijing since 1950, when China says it “peacefully liberated” the isolated plateau region. Chinese rule has been a source of conflict ever since, as Tibetans complain Beijing is eroding their culture and religion and agitate for the return of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile following a failed uprising in 1959.

At least 117 Tibetans have committed acts of self-immolation since 2009 in protest at Chinese policies. More than 90 have died.

China however denies that its rule over the Tibet Autonomous Region is repressive in nature and says that it has brought prosperity to a long-impoverished area. It says that its relocation policy is aimed at economic improvements.

Beijing regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist and is highly sensitive to any perceived international endorsement of the Buddhist leader. A May 2012 meeting between British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Dalai Lama resulted in a 14-month diplomatic “deep freeze” until normal contacts were restored earlier this week.

The Dalai Lama denies he is seeking an independent Tibet and says he simply wants greater autonomy for his homeland.