Tibet_Laws_Government

Done by:

Helen
Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China ( PRC) have ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army invaded the Tibetan area of Chamdo, crushing minimal resistance from the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951, the Tibetan representatives, under PLA military pressure, signed a seventeen piece agreement with the PRC's Central people's governement affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.

RELIGIOUS LEADER || The 14th Dalai Lama. In exile in Dharamsala, India. || THE P.R.C. || Colonial ||
 * NATIONAL FLAG || Snow lions with red and blue rays. Outlawed in Tibet. ||
 * POLITICAL AND
 * GOVERNMENT IN EXILE || Parliamentary ||
 * GOVERNMENT || Communist ||
 * RELATIONSHIP WITH
 * LEGAL STATUS || Occupied ||

In February 1912 the Qing Dynasty Emperor abdicated and the new Republic of China was formed. In April 1912 the Chinese garrison of troops in Lhasa surrendered to the Tibetan authorities. The new Chinese Republican government wished to make the commander of the Chinese troops in Lhasa its new Tibetan representative, but the Tibetans were in favour of having all of the Chinese troops return to China. The 13th Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama returned to Tibet from India in July 1912. By the end of 1912, the Chinese troops in Tibet had returned, via India, to China Proper. In 1913, Tibet and Mongolia signed a treaty proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China. However, the validity of such a treaty is disputed by historians and diplomats. In 1914, representatives of China, Tibet and Britain negotiated a treaty in India: the Simla Convention. During the convention, the British tried to divide Tibet into Inner and Outer Tibet. When negotiations broke down over the specific boundary between Inner and Outer, the British demanded instead to advance their line of control, enabling them to annex 90,000 square kilometers of traditional Tibetan territory in southern Tibet, which corresponds to most of the modern Indian state of 'Arunachal Pradesh', while recognizing Chinese suzerainty over Tibet and affirming the latter's status as part of Chinese territory. Tibetan representatives secretly signed under British pressure; however, the representative of China's central government declared that the secretive annexation of territory was not acceptable. The boundary established in the convention, the McMahen Line, was considered by the British and later the independent Indian government to be the boundary; however, the Chinese view since then has been that since China, which was sovereign over Tibet, did not sign the treaty, the treaty was meaningless, and the annexation and control of southern Tibet Arunachal Pradesh by India is illegal. This paved the way to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the boundary dispute between China and India today. The subsequent outbreak of WW1 and the Chinese Civil War caused the Western powers and the infighting factions of China proper to lose interest in Tibet, and the 13th Dalai Lama ruled undisturbed until his death in 1933. At that time, the government of Tibet controlled all of Ü-Tsang and western Kham, roughly coincident with the borders of Tibet Autonomous Region today. Eastern Kham, separated by the 'Yangtze River' was under the control of Chinese warlord Liu Wenhui. The situation in Amdo was more complicated, with the Xining area controlled by ethnic Hui warlord Ma Bufang, who constantly strove to exert control over the rest of Amdo (Qinghai). In 1935 the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso was born in Amdo in eastern Tibet and was recognized as the latest reincarnation. He was taken to Lhasa in 1937 where he was later given an official ceremony in 1939. During the 1940s during World War II, two Austrian mountaineers, Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaider came to Lhasa, where Harrer became tutor and consort to the young Dalai Lama giving him a sound knowledge of western culture and modern society, until he was forced to leave with the Chinese invasion in 1950.


 * __Human rights__**

The Chinese leadership's preoccupation with stability in the midst of continuing economic and social upheaval started an increase in human rights violations. China's increasingly prominent international profile, symbolized in 2001 by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and by Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics, was accompanied by tightened controls on fundamental freedoms. The leadership turned to trusted tools, limiting free expression by arresting academics, closing newspapers and magazines, strictly controlling Internet content, and utilizing a refurbished Strike Hard campaign to circumvent legal safeguards for criminal suspects and alleged separatists, terrorists, and so-called religious extremists. In its campaign to eradicate Falungong, Chinese officials imprisoned thousands of practitioners and used torture and psychological pressure to force recantations. Legal experts continued the work of professionalizing the legal system but authorities in too many cases invoked "rule of law" to justify repressive politics. After the September 11 attacks in the United States, Chinese officials used concern with global terrorism as justification for crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang.

At the beginning of the Tibetan New Year in February, government workers, cadres, and school children were banned from attending prayer festivals at monasteries or from contributing to temples and monasteries. During Monlam Chemo, formerly a festival of great religious significance, monks at Lhasa's major monasteries were not permitted to leave their respective complexes, and government authorities banned certain rites. The Strike Hard campaign in Tibet had a decidedly political focus. At a May meeting in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), courts were ordered to carry out the campaign forcefully against those who help Tibetans reach Nepal or Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama's home in exile. During the first month of the campaign, 254 people were caught trying to leave or reenter the TAR, many allegedly carrying "reactionary propaganda materials." In June, police in the Lhasa region detained hundreds of Tibetans who burned incense, said prayers, or threw //tsampa// (roasted barley) into the air in defiance of an order banning celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday. Some twenty Tibetans were arrested or sentenced in 2001 for "splittist" activities. In October, at least three foreign tourists and three Tibetans were detained in Lhasa for displaying the banned Tibetan flag and shouting pro-independence slogans. Authorities cut back the number of nuns and monks from 8,000 to 1,400 at the Buddhist Study Center Larung Gar near Serthar in Sichuan province, destroying their housing as they left. A similar order was put into effect at Yachen, another encampment in Sichuan. Authorities continued to deny access to the Panchen Lama, the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism.


 * __Anti-discrimination policies__**

Tibet was a sovereign state prior to the Chinese invasion of 1949. The Tibetan people have the right to self-determination, and the failure to recognize that right remains a root cause of the human rights violations against the Tibetan people.It is widely recognized that since the establishment of the PRC, China has adopted an official policy of ethnic and racial equality. This policy is reflected in the PRC’s constitution and a number of anti-discrimination laws passed by the legislature. These legal protections and the Chinese government’s apparent commitment to the elimination of racial discrimination within its borders is encouraging. By setting public standards and examples condemning racial discrimination to guide its citizens’ conduct, the Chinese government could have taken the first necessary steps in its battle against discrimination.

The Tibetan people also have a right to self-determination. Self-determination is the collective right of a people to determine freely their own political status and to pursue their own economic, social and cultural development. The Tibetans are a "people," with a common history, racial and ethnic identity, distinct culture and language, definable territory and common economic ties, in terms of the right to self-determination. The General Assembly has not retreated from its recognition that the Tibetan people have a right to self-determination. China’s occupation of Tibet and its failure to honor the Tibetan people’s right to self-determination are the root cause of the racial discrimination against the Tibetan people