The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has accused China of systematically persecuting and forcibly assimilating Buddhist nuns and monks, with the aim of bringing Tibet under the total control of the People's Republic. "Now, 61 years after the bloody suppression of the popular uprising, there is still resistance against China's rule in Tibet. The security authorities see Buddhist nuns and monks as particularly suspicious – and systematic measures are taken to break their will, even by means of torture and rape", explained Ulrich Delius, the STP's director in Göttingen on Monday. The human rights organization called for the immediate dissolution of the re-education camps to which the nuns and monks were brought. Previously, the authorities had forced them to give up their religious teaching in Buddhist institutes.

The STP criticized the forced internment of nuns and monks as inhumane and as a violation of basic human rights. In August 2019, around 7,000 nuns and monks had to leave the Yachen Gar Buddhist study center in Sichuan province by order of the authorities. Back then, several thousand people were then sent to re-education and labor camps. Something similar had already happened in 2017 and 2018 at the Larung Gar Study Center, and more than 4,800 nuns and monks had been displaced at that time. Those who were released from custody reported that the guards had regularly attacked the inmates. People were tortured or even raped in order to break their will and their personality.   

Every year on March 10, the people of Tibet commemorate the victims of the popular uprising against the occupation of their country by China on March 10, 1959, which is to be seen as a violation of international law. Around 87,000 people died in the first year after the uprising began, and a further 1.1 million people fell victim to China's repression in Tibet in the following decades.

Header Image: Michael Woditschka via Flickr.