In the breaking reports coming out of Tibet, a Tibetan youth jumped to death from a building in protest against China’s biased COVID restrictions in the occupied region on September 24. Since the outbreak of COVID in Tibet, not only the authorities were ill-prepared to handle the situation, they mishandled too.
According the NGO, Tibetan Center for Human Rights & Democracy, which has been carrying out investigations into the COVID situation inside Tibet, posted on Saturday that a Tibetan youth in an apparent protest against China’s draconian measures to enforce zer0-covid policies, jump to death from a building in Lhasa.
As per the report by Voice of America, Tibetans, in a rare outburst of open despair, have gone online to Weibo, Douyin, and other Chinese social media platforms to draw attention to the situation in the camps that lack adequate hygiene, food, and medical care.
This suicide comes after the vice president of Lhasa publicly apologized for their failure to handle the pandemic situation in the region. It is the first time ever any authority issued public apologies since China took over Tibet more than six decades ago. However, it seems to be just a publicity stunt while they continue to prosecute individuals who raised their voices against the authorities.
More seriously, Tibetans have complained that they are being treated as criminals rather than patients. In a politically oppressed community, this puts up additional psychological trouble in an environment of pandemic fear. The biased restrictive measures against the Tibetans were to some extent exposed on the internet but it is just the tip of the iceberg.
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