UN experts: China forcing Tibetans into 'vocational training'

UN experts on Thursday accused China of forcing hundreds of thousands of Tibetans into programmes that threaten their cultural identity and could lead to forced labour.

Six UN special rapporteurs voiced concern over claims that the so-called vocational training and labour transfer programmes were being used as a pretext to undermine Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity, and to monitor and indoctrinate Tibetans.

"Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have reportedly been 'transferred' from their traditional rural lives to low-skilled and low-paid employment since 2015, through a programme described as voluntary -- but in practice their participation has reportedly been coerced," the experts said.

They said the labour transfer programme was facilitated by a network of vocational training centres, "which focus less on developing professional skills and more on cultural and political indoctrination in a militarised environment".

They found that Tibetans in the programme were reportedly prevented from using the Tibetan language and discouraged from expressing their religious identity.

The statement was signed by the special rapporteurs on contemporary slavery, people trafficking, contemporary racism, cultural rights, minority issues and the right to development.

Special rapporteurs are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but are unpaid, independent experts who do not speak for the United Nations.

"Tibetans are being drawn away from sustainable livelihoods in which they have traditionally had a comparative advantage, such as wool and dairy production, and into low-paid, low-skilled work in manufacturing and construction," the experts said.

"Tibetans are transferred directly from training centres to their new workplaces, leaving it unclear whether they are consenting to this new employment. There is no oversight to determine whether working conditions constitute forced labour."

The experts urged Beijing to clarify how Tibetans could opt out of the programmes, and to monitor their working conditions in new places of employment.

Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it "peacefully liberated" the rugged plateau in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region.

But many exiled Tibetans accuse China's ruling Communist Party of repression, torture and eroding their culture.

In February, three UN experts said that around a million Tibetan children had been separated from their families and put through "forced assimilation" at Chinese residential schools.

The special rapporteurs voiced their alarm at Chinese government policies aimed at assimilating Tibetan people culturally, religiously and linguistically through the school system.