GENEVA (27 April 2023) – UN experts* today expressed concern over allegations that so-called “labour transfer” and “vocational training” programmes in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China are being used as a pretext to undermine Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity, to monitor and politically indoctrinate Tibetans, and warned that such programmes could lead to situations of forced labour.
“Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have reportedly been ‘transferred’ from their traditional rural lives to low-skilled and low-paid employment since 2015, through a programme described as voluntary, but in practice their participation has reportedly been coerced,” the UN experts said.
They noted that the labour transfer programme is facilitated by a network of ‘vocational training centres’, which focus less on developing professional skills and more on cultural and political indoctrination in a militarised environment.
The experts found that Tibetans in the programme are reportedly prevented from using the Tibetan minority language and discouraged from expressing their religious identity, both considered obstacles to poverty alleviation by the authorities.
Contrary to the programme's purported focus on improving living conditions, they said that the labour transfer programme could further impoverish Tibetans and lead to forced labour.
“Tibetans are being drawn away from sustainable livelihoods in which they have traditionally had a comparative advantage, such as wool and...
Five years before the DA sanctioned Cape Town councillor Abdulkader Elyas for lying about being a medical doctor, he was claiming an extraordinary side career as an in-demand speaker for big corpo...