Phayul
November 25, 2015
Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, November 25: The Chinese authorities confirmed Tuesday that the German delegation participating in the 13th Human Rights Dialogue in Beijing will visit Tibet. The time and the duration of the visit are not known yet.
Li Junhua, Director-General of the Department of International Organizations and Conferences of the Foreign Ministry, said at a press conference, “I hope the tour will help the German side get a correct and objective understanding of the region.”
According to the official press release posted on Xinhua, China’s official mouthpiece, China and Germany held ‘candid’ and ‘in-depth’ talks on human rights, different understandings of the human rights concept, human rights judicial protection and other matters.
The details of the conversation between the two sides are not available. However, with the announcement of the delegation visiting TAR, some say it indicated human rights violation in Tibet being one of the core topics discussed during the talk. “The foreign delegation allowed in Tibet is a welcome news. However there is always a different side to the ‘truth’ shown by the Chinese since all the visits are highly monitored. They will not show the real picture of the prisons or monasteries, which are under their domination,” said Jigme Yeshi, a Ph.D student of East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
US congressional delegation led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made a ‘rare visit’ to Tibet this month, for which Pelosi, a frequent critic of China’s human rights record and a great supporter of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, thanked Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Activists say that the Chinese government might have also taken the visit as an opportunity to correct its image in the field of human rights in the past year, despite various rights watch groups reporting appalling rights violation in China.
The 2015 annual report of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) has marked the year 2015 as ‘another punishing year for human rights in China’.
