Discriminatory Recruitment Practices in Tibet

By Hugh M Casey / October 28, 2019;

*Screenshot of the Tibet Autonomous Region job announcement on online education platform www.educity.cn specifying preconditions on Tibetan applicants to criticise the Dalai Lama.*

Graduates from the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) must now “expose and criticise the Dalai Lama” and “take a clear and distinct [political] stand” in order to successfully find work in Chinese public institutions.

A job announcement on the online education platform https://www.educity.cn. lists criticism of His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a prerequisite. According to the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), a non-profit advocacy group working to promote democratic freedoms for Tibetans, the other conditions released by TAR officials include:

“Support the Party’s leadership, resolutely implement the [Chinese Communist] Party’s (CCP) line, line of approach, policies, and the guiding ideology of Tibet work in the new era; align ideologically, politically, and in action with the Party Central Committee; oppose any splittist tendencies; expose and criticize the Dalai Lama; safeguard the unity of the motherland and ethnic unity and take a firm stand on political issues, taking a clear and distinct stand.”

Matteo Mecacci, President of the International Campaign for Tibet, believes that the new requirements symbolise the “systemic” discrimination of Tibetans living under Chinese rule, adding that being forced to repudiate His Holiness the Dalai Lama is “an unnecessary humiliation[…], which only hardens the Tibetan spirit of resistance, and does not certainly provide legitimacy to Chinese rule in Tibet.”

When asked for comment by the Hindustan Times, the Chinese foreign ministry said: “Some anti-China hostile forces often spread anti-China remarks for their ulterior political purposes, which are not worth refuting.”

Across China, workers must meet certain stipulations of loyalty to the CCP. This is exemplified by a job listed by the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Natural Resources where applicants must “[r]esolutely support the Party’s line, principles, and policies.”

However, the requirements for candidates from TAR are more probing, and they must pass the 2019 Tibet Autonomous Region Political Examination Form for College Graduate Recruitment in Public Institutions.

In his statement, Mecacci went on to claim that targeting TAR graduates amounts to racial profiling and forcing candidates to denounce a certain political opinion constitutes a violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects a person’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.