China Announces Rewards of up to $ 44,000 for Informants inside Tibet

By Ben Byrne / August 20, 2019;

Chinese police line up in front of a monastery in Tibet
Photo: RFA

The Chinese government in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have tripled the cash rewards offered to anyone reporting “illegal” online content to up to 300,000 Yuan (approx. $ 44,000). The tactic is part of a larger “social supervision strategy to mobilise the general public to effectively prevent and combat illegal and criminal online content”.

“Illegal” online content is defined, in typically oblique fashion by the Chinese government, as anything that “subverts state power”, promotes “overthrowing the socialist system” or “splitting the country”, or that“distorts the history of the party, the nation and the army”. Posting content deemed to be advocating the Dalai Lama’s middle-way policy, in favour of the Tibetan mother-tongue, or to be a challenge to China’s territorial claim over Tibet , could lead to severe punishment. Vague definitions of what constitutes a crime allow the Chinese room to persecute anybody engaging in peaceful protest against repressive policies.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), based in Dharamshala, asserts that the policy shows the governments determination to “turn the public into government spies” and that it stands as an “example of the creation of a police state in Tibet”.

The increase in rewards took place in February amid a broader Tibet-wide campaign against organised crime and so called “black and evil forces”. Sources in the region claim that this is a front for stifling dissent and cracking down on the daily existence of Tibetans, leading to increased mistrust within local communities. In a report released in May, TCHRD claimed that the campaign had resulted in the “detention, arrest, and torture of human rights and environmental activists”.

The latest notice also bans the use of electronic payments made through cheques, credit cards as well as Alipay and Wechat to send donations to organisations or people supporting “ethnic separatist forces, religious extremist forces, and violent terrorist forces”.

TAR Public Security Bureau in their previous notice, issued in 2018, and offered rewards of up to 100,000 yuan (USD 15,600) for informing about “illegal” online content.