Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Dharamsala

Press Release Contact person: Lobsang Tsering

17th July 1997 Ph: 01892 23363

308 Tibetan women sterilised and 1 dies after forced abortion

Between September and October of 1996, 308 women in the sub-district of Takar in Chushur district under Lhasa city were sterilised over a period of 22 days. Nyima Dolma, aged 27 from Takar, died after one such forced sterilisation. Although Nyima was in good health and free of any sickness before sterilisation, Chinese officials announced that the cause of the death was ill health. In another case, Yangzom Dolkar, a 27 year-old woman from Takar, was similarly in good health before she was forcibly sterilised. She subsequently fell seriously ill and, faced with extensive health expenses, is now reported to be struggling for her and her family's livelihood. All of the expenses related to Chinese imposed sterilisations in Tibet must be covered by the individual.

This information has been provided by a recent arrival from Takar (name withheld) who says that the Takar health department has been conducting sterilisations and abortions and dispensing contraceptive pills to control the Tibetan birth rate in the region. Birth control policy has been launched in the Takar, Jinup and Nyethang sub-districts of Chushur.

Officials and doctors from Chushur District, the Mother Child Health Care Office in Lhasa City, and the Lhasa City Women's Hospital arrived at the Takar sub-district in September 1996 and instructed Takar government officials to take strict measures against women with three children who must be forced to undergo sterilisation.

In a similar report, Lhundrup Gaden, a Sera monk who recently escaped to India, reported on the stringent birth control policies in place in Nyangral township under Lhasa City. Lhundrup visited the area in June 1996 and reported that the birth control program had been launched in the town's 2nd unit, comprising 60 peasant families and totalling about 600 people, in 1994.

Of the total population of the 2nd unit, the percentage of child birth allowed by the authorities in one year was fixed at 4.5% and it was mandatory for couples who wished to have a child to test their luck in a lottery system. If the couple was unlucky and their names were not drawn, then the mother, even if already five or six months pregnant, had to undergo an abortion.

If a couple produces a child without undergoing the lottery system, they are fined up to 500 yuan (equivalent to more than US $60 and one month's good salary in Tibet). When this "unofficial" child grows up, he or she is denied a registration card and other welfare facilities and will find it near impossible to receive any sort of educational opportunities.

If a couple is successful in one lottery, they are banned from the lot system for the three subsequent years. If a couple is successful in two lottery draws, they are forbidden from participating in the lottery for the rest of their lives. On the other side, if a couple does not produce a child for a long period of time, then that couple is highly commended by the Chinese authorities and even awarded prizes.

The use of economic sanctions and rewards to enforce the birth control policy regulations are outlined in Chapter Four: "Rewards and Good treatment" and Chapter Five: "Limitations and Punishments" of the TAR 1992 regulations. Tibetan women have not only been deprived of control over their own bodies and the size of their families but must also suffer severe economic penalties for "illegal" births.

In an attempt to conceal the ongoing birth control policy in the "Tibetan Autonomous Region", Chinese health authorities forbid the official use of words relating to birth control. An official notice issued by the National Family Planning Commission and the Health Department, dated 13 September 1995, was sent to all levels of government offices. The notice banned the use of words such as "drug induced abortion", "surgical abortion" and "sterilisation", and required that they be substituted with the terms "out-patient operation clinics", "family planning centres" and "operation hospitals" respectively.

The notice also ordered all health offices in all regions to be united in this campaign and to inform the general public to use these new terms on television, in newspapers, broadcasts or periodicals.

Since China's take-over of Tibet, the Chinese authorities have taken various steps to effect the sinocisation of the Tibetan people. Birth control policy is carried out in all parts of Tibet through propaganda, coercion and strict regulatory measures. The systematic and organised manner in which China is implementing its birth control policy in Tibet corresponds to the Chinese population transfer policy being conducted. It is estimated that some 7.5 Chinese settlers have been moved into Tibet, already outnumbering the 6 million Tibetans. By denying Tibetan women their reproductive rights, China further marginalises ethnic Tibetans in Tibet.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy is gravely concerned at reports of China's coercive birth control policy against Tibetan women in Tibet and believes that this constitutes an immediate and critical threat to the survival of Tibetans as a distinct people. TCHRD considers China's action to be a direct violation of article 16 of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, to which China is a State Party, which safeguards the right of all women "to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children".