Tibet and Xinjiang: The US increases pressure on China

While this week will be known for China gathering 14 Palestinian groups in Beijing to unite terrorists under a “Beijing declaration” and trying to get Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas into the PLO, the last weeks were about the US administration trying to increase pressure on China on Tibet and Xinjiang.

US President Joe Biden’s administration said it would impose sanctions on more
Chinese officials for an “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity”, capping off a week of sharp rebukes over Beijing’s alleged human-rights abuses and support
for Russia’s war against Ukraine. This came around the time that President Biden
signed into law the Tibet Resolve Act. Less noticed but equally important was the
judgement by Argentina’s Federal Court reviving a complaint that alleged that China had committed genocide and crimes against humanity and the Uyghur people.

Meanwhile, one finds that the US State Department has also announced that it
intended to impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials for their repression of
religious and ethnic minorities, meaning thereby the Uyghur and Tibetans. The US
has long stood by the Tibetans through bipartisan legislations, it is time for
Washington to stand up for the Uyghur peoples also.

Turning to the Tibet Bill which US President Joe Biden signed into law (12 July) it
must be said that it was had been anticipated and in reality, not a new bill, but
improves upon the Tibet Policy Act of 2002. Titled rather ambitiously, “Promoting a
Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” this Act gives a fillip to America’s Tibet
policy through further amendments to the Act of 2002 and seeks to facilitate the
resolution of the longstanding conflict between Tibet and China. Coincidentally, a few days earlier, Tibet and China held secret back-channel talks. Sikyong Penpa
Tshering while announcing the holding of talks said the Tibetan people did not expect anything from President Xi Jinping adding that the long-term view being taken was for the day after Xi! These talks are part of the ongoing episodic conversation that takes place between Tibet and China, but without any concrete results. It remains to be seen if the US Bill will bring any pressure on China to actually ‘talk’ to the Dalai Lama.

The act rightly asserts that People’s Republic of China (PRC) government and the
Communist Party of China (CPC) wrongly claim historically Tibet as a part of China.
It is for this reason that the act specifies that public diplomacy initiatives should
actively combat disinformation propagated by China concerning Tibet, including
disinformation and propaganda about the history of Tibet, its people, and the Dalai
Lama. This point is significant as the Chinese narrative about Tibet (called Xizang by China today) is completely skewed. Declaring the US administration’s stand,
President Joe Biden said, “…I share the Congress’s bipartisan commitment to
advancing the human rights of Tibetans and supporting efforts to preserve their
distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage. My administration will continue to call on the People’s Republic of China to resume direct dialogue, without
preconditions, with the Dalai Lama, or his representatives, to seek a settlement that
resolves differences and leads to a negotiated agreement on Tibet.” Notably, the Act
looks at both sides doing things to improve the prospects for dialogue that could lead to a negotiated agreement on Tibet.

It is in this context that one should see the US State Department’s announcement it
was “taking steps to impose visa restrictions on PRC officials for their involvement in repression of marginalized religious and ethnic communities”. Basically, America has said that China has not lived up to its commitments to respect and protect human rights, as demonstrated by the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the persistence of human rights violations in Tibet.

However, the State Department does not restrict itself to Tibet and Xinjiang, it speaks of the erosion of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong and raises the bar by talking of Chinese “transnational repression around the world”. Interesting turn of phrase for it echoes the Chinese repression of ethnic minority and Chinese citizens living overseas.

A step back shows that in 2022, the US Treasury Department had frozen the US
assets of and blocked transactions of two top Tibetan officials. The first was Wu
Yingjie, TAR Communist Party Secretary from 2016 to 2021, while the other is Zhang Hongbo, the Tibetan region’s police chief since 2018. In 2023, the State Department imposed visa sanctions on Chinese officials pursuing “forced assimilation” of children in Tibet. The latest announcement adds to the pressure that the US continues to put on China through legislation and other legal measures. Tibet and its people is the only region where US lawmakers have made an issue of.

They have also passed laws like the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act. The State Department had earlier criticized Hong Kong for passage of its new national security law, claiming that the vague language in its provisions created uncertainty in the minds of the residents. A State Department report of April 2024 accused China of continuing to “dismantle” Hong Kong’s political freedoms and autonomy. The enforcement of the national security law along with its retrospective application as well as the denial of bail to activists was cited by the US State Department as being central to China’s disinterest in keeping Hong Kong’s democratic system in place.

At the end of this analysis, it is necessary to understand the importance of the recent judgement of the Argentinian Court of Cassation. It recently ruled that the Court of Appeal of Buenos Aires’ decision to shelve the original complaint filed by several international organizations supporting the Uyghur cause, lacked sufficient
justification. It noted that the appealed ruling did not provide legal and political
reasons for restricting the victims’ rights and refusing to exercise universal
jurisdiction. Notably, the judgement stated that Argentina’s judicial system possessed the necessary resources to ensure victims of international crimes could access jurisdiction for their cause. Consequently, the court ordered the prosecutor to open an investigation, mandating that the judge to commence investigatory stage of
proceedings. On 16 August 2022, a criminal complaint had been filed in Buenos
Aires under Section 118 of the Constitution of Argentina, which permits the
prosecution of international crimes regardless of where they occur. The legal
campaign in Argentina was launched by the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur
Human Rights Project in the courts of Argentina in relation to the international crimes of genocide being committed against the Uyghur.

The foregoing narrative shows the wide net cast by the US against China. This
includes legislative action and imposition of sanctions. Thus, different wings of the
US government act to send out a strong signal on the need to protect the rights and
identity of ethnic minorities in China. The pivotal Tibet Act 2024 strengthens
America’s policy following other such significant acts, like the Tibetan Policy and
Support Act of 2019 and the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018. On the 65th
Tibetan Uprising Day in March 2024, a resolution was introduced in the US Congress
reaffirming support for the Tibetan people. Other countries can take a leaf from the US handling of Tibet and Xinjiang which serves to put pressure on the PRC. It could
be argued that some of these Acts do not go far enough, but the fact that they are in
place and in force serve to send a signal, which by itself carries a lot of weight.