Contact is taking a holiday!

With its headquarters situated in New York, the global non-governmental organisation known as Human Rights Watch (HRW) has focused its gaze across the world upon China in its World Report 2013 released this month, and has consequently censured the country. Although China has a very rapidly growing economy, it severely lags behind in terms of human rights, and is cited by HRW as being a country that “openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.”

Such “extra-judicial measures” range anywhere from the imprisonment of vocal human rights activists, as seen in the case of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, to introducing “even more hard-line measures such as collective punishment for relatives and neighbours of self-immolators.”
In a year when Tibet witnessed 83 self-immolation protests against Chinese rule, HRW said the situation in the Tibetan areas “remained tense following the massive crackdown on popular protests that swept the plateau in 2008.”

“The government has yet to indicate that it will accommodate the aspirations of Tibetan people for greater autonomy, even within the narrow confines of the country’s autonomy law on ethnic minorities’ areas,” the group said in its 665-page report, and that Tibetans suspected of being critical of political, religious, cultural, or economic state policies are systematically targeted on charges of “separatism”.

HRW further notes that “Chinese security forces maintain a heavy presence and the authorities continue to tightly restrict access and travel to Tibetan areas, particularly for journalists and foreign visitors.”

As part of its drive to build “a New Socialist Countryside” in Tibet, HRW blames the Chinese government for continuing to implement “large development programs mandating rehousing or relocating up to 80 percent of the rural population.”
According to the report, China executes more prisoners than the rest of the world combined.