Petition submitted to the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights

December 07, 2016

To

The Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights

OHCHR in New York

UN Headquarters

New York, NY 10017

Your Excellency Andrew Gilmour,

The World will observe December 10, 2016 as the Human Rights Day. This year, Human Rights Day calls on everyone to stand up for someone's rights! And this is exactly what the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of NY&NJ wanted to do by submitting this petition to you. We wanted to stand up for our brothers and sisters who are currently under the Communist Chinese rule in Tibet.

Tibetans in Tibet lack even the most basic human rights such as freedom of religion, movement and speech that are taken for guarantee elsewhere in the world!

The ongoing demolition of the Larung Gar Institute, the largest Tibetan Buddhist center in the world, by the Chinese government is a serious abuse of religious freedom. The monks and nuns are forced to renounce their Buddhist religion. As a result, three nuns have reportedly committed suicide in protest. We seriously fear that the Cultural Revolution is reviving in Tibet.

The expelled monks and nuns from Larung Gar were forced to go through reeducation program and some were reportedly imprisoned. The Chinese Government is forcing the Tibetan nuns to dress up in military uniform and sing praise songs of motherland and communist party and dance to the tune of Chinese pop songs. This is very humiliating to every Tibetan, particularly to those nuns who have taken a vow to live a pure Buddhist way of life. Forcing the Tibetan nuns to dance in front of lay people is a direct violation of basic human rights.

Tibetans are not free to move even within their own country. They have to go through numerous check posts even to visit holy places within Tibet. Tibetans have generally had difficulty obtaining Chinese passport. However those Tibetans who have managed to obtain one, the Officials in some Tibetan regions have been confiscating passports in recent weeks to prevent Tibetan people from attending the Kalachakra ceremony in northern India in January 2017, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, who lives in exile in India, plans to teach at the Kalachakra.

As a direct result of the lack of the fundamental Human Rights in Tibet, more than 140 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest the Chinese rule. So today on the occasion of the 61th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we the RTYC, NY&NJ would like to urge the UN to intervene immediately and send a mandated commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions into Tibetan regions, especially Larung Gar and find a mechanism to put all the human rights violation in Tibet by the Chinese Government.

Sincerely

Tenzin Kalden

President

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Petition submitted to the Ambassador Zhang Qiyue of Consul General of the People's Republic of China

May 23, 2016

Ambassador Zhang Qiyue

Consul General of the People's Republic of China

New York

May 23, 2016 marks the 65th anniversary of the signing of the most controversial document, so- called 17 Point Agreement which was forced on to the Tibetan delegation to sign on May 23^rd 1951 by the Chinese Government. This compelled Tibet to co-exist with a resurgent communist China. The People’s Republic of China will once again flaunt this dubious legal instrument, the only one China signed with Tibetan Government, to continue to legitimize its claim on Tibet. China will use the anniversary to showcase its achievements in Tibet to justify its continued occupation of Tibet. Most importantly, China may use the anniversary to deepen economic development policies designed to further integrate Tibet with China. Tibetans inside Tibet may be forced to participate in the anniversary festivities. But the ground reality is from 1951 – 1959 His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Government of Tibet tried to live within the framework of the 17 Point Agreement. But slowly and surely the Chinese Government started interfering in the internal structure of the Dalai Lama and the Government of Tibet. This resulted in the March uprising of the Tibetan people against the Chinese occupying force and subsequently the escape of His Holiness the Dalai Lama into India.

So we are asking China to stop making such a fuss over this agreement, the terms of which the Chinese authorities had systematically violated and which was repudiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Soon after his arrival in Tezpur, India, His Holiness the Dalai Lama issued a statement on April 18, 1959, explaining the 17-Point Agreement was signed under duress and that the Chinese government had deliberately violated the terms of the Agreement. Thus from that day onwards, we Tibetans consider the agreement is null and void.

So with whatever fanfare China commemorates this infamous agreement, the glaring fact is that the struggle of the Tibetan people to secure a better future for themselves has intensified over these sixty five years. The recent wave of self-immolation protest by the Tibetans inside Tibet is a clear evidence for this. So your 65th anniversary celebration of the agreement cannot whitewash this vital fact or the fact of the atrocities committed on the Tibetan people by the occupying power. This clearly illustrates that for the Tibetan people the issue of Tibet is not over and their struggle to live and work in dignity and freedom in their own homeland still continues in full spirit.

Sincerely

________________________________

The President

RTYC, NY&NJ

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