The Yale Himalaya Initiative presents:
Nicholas Bequelin, Senior Researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, and Visiting Scholar at The China Center, Yale Law School: “Mass Resettlement Policies on the Tibetan Plateau: Issues and Prospects.”
A light dinner will be provided.
Abstract:
Between 2006 and 2012, over one-third of the entire Tibetan population of China has been rehoused or relocated under Chinese efforts at “Building a New Socialist Countryside” in Tibetan areas. In the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), two million rural Tibetans were rehoused though government-ordered renovation or construction of new houses, while in the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau hundreds of thousands of nomadic herders were relocated or settled in new permanent villages. Over a million more are scheduled to move to “New Socialist Villages” by the end of 2014.
While the Chinese government insists that all rehousing and relocations are entirely voluntary and respect “the will of the Tibetan farmers and herders,” Human Rights Watch documented in a 115-page report published last year extensive rights violations ranging from government failures to consult with affected communities in advance and failures to provide adequate compensation, both of which are required under international law for evictions to be legitimate.
Based on extensive testimonies collected over several years and analysis of official Chinese-language sources and satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch’s report shows that Tibetans have virtually no say in policies that are radically altering their way of life and are radically transforming the Tibetan plateau.
Nicholas Bequelin is Senior Researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, and currently a Visiting Scholar at Yale University. An expert on ethnic minority issues in China, he has written extensively about Tibet and Xinjiang. He obtained his PhD in History from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, EHESS), Paris, in 2001, and is a graduate in Chinese from the School of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), also in Paris. He has been living in Hong Kong for the past 15 years. He is a regular interviewee of major international media on legal, political and human rights developments in China.