Mick Hartley

Make it difficult for journalists, and the continuing destruction of a country will barely make the news:

In a massive campaign that recalls the socialist engineering of an earlier era, the Chinese government has relocated some 250,000 Tibetans – nearly one-tenth of the population – from scattered rural hamlets to new “socialist villages,” ordering them to build new housing largely at their own expense and without their consent.

The government calls the year-old project the “comfortable housing program,” and its stated aim is to present a more modern face for this ancient region, which China has controlled since 1950.

It claims that the new housing on main roads, sometimes only a mile from previous homes, will enable small farmers and herders to have access to schools and jobs, as well as better health care and hygiene.

But the broader aim seems to be remaking Tibet – a region with its own culture, language and religious traditions – in order to have firmer political control over its population. It comes as China prepares for an influx of millions of tourists in the run-up to next year’s Summer Olympic Games.

A vital element in the strategy is to displace a revered leader, the Dalai Lama, now 71, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for advocating resistance to the communist government. The government hopes to replace him after he dies with a state-appointed successor, and in the meantime it’s opened the gates of Tibet to greater numbers of ethnic Han Chinese and tightened control of religious activity…

Other than a state media account that proclaimed that “beaming smiles” were “fixed on the faces of farmers and herders” as they built and moved into new housing in what it called “socialist villages,” the Chinese news media have given almost no coverage to the forced relocation.

Foreign reporters, under tight strictures that largely prevent them from traveling to Tibet except on once-a-year trips under Foreign Ministry guidance, risk being removed from the region if they openly interview people. This report was prepared while undertaking tourism in Tibet.