Dharamshala, 19th March: According to South China Morning Post, a new US government report shows that foreign diplomats, journalists, and tourists have been “systematically” denied access to China’s Tibet autonomous territory for the past year, showing that Washington’s efforts to prod China into opening up the fiercely guarded region have failed for now. As per the news, the report which was published on Thursday cited the coronavirus outbreak and China’s shutdown of the US consulate in neighboring Sichuan province, there was no hint of a relaxing of limitations in comparison to 2020.
The report supposedly claimed that the obstacles included harassment of US journalists, the Chinese government’s refusal to approve any visits to Tibet by the US charge d’affaires at its Beijing embassy, and the Chinese government’s stonewalling of diplomats’ engagements with locals in Tibetan areas outside TAR.
During a personal trip to a Tibetan prefecture, a US ambassador claimed being denied boarding on a plane. On a bike tour, another was denied admission to a prefecture.
The report further stated that China’s security forces used conspicuous monitoring to intimidate US diplomats and officials including while on personal travel to Tibetan areas, followed them, prevented them from meeting or speaking with local contacts, harassed them, and restricted their movement in these areas.
The report also stated that China’s closing of Washington’s consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan, in July 2020 – in retribution for the US government’s closure of a Chinese consulate in Houston over espionage allegations – had hampered US efforts to gain access to Tibet.
The State Department report comes only weeks after Freedom House, a US-based international democracy watchdog, named Tibet the world’s least free territory for the second year in a running, with Syria and South Sudan.
It is high time for the rest of the world to realize Tibet’s catastrophic situation and unite together to support the Tibetan cause.
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