{"id":12507,"date":"2020-09-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/savetibet.nl\/nieuws\/global-parliamentarians-call-for-immediate-action-against-tibetan-coercive-labor-program\/"},"modified":"2020-09-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T22:00:00","slug":"global-parliamentarians-call-for-immediate-action-against-tibetan-coercive-labor-program","status":"publish","type":"nieuws","link":"https:\/\/savetibet.nl\/en\/news\/global-parliamentarians-call-for-immediate-action-against-tibetan-coercive-labor-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Global parliamentarians call for \u201cimmediate action\u201d against Tibetan coercive labor program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the wake of a new report exposing China\u2019s coercive labor programs in Tibet, more than 60 parliamentarians from 16 countries are demanding urgent action<\/a> against the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe call upon our governments to take immediate action to condemn these atrocities and to prevent further human rights abuses,\u201d say the parliamentarians, who are members of The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China<\/a>, which works to reform how democratic countries deal with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a report released today<\/a>, Sept. 22, 2020, scholar Adrian Zenz, the alliance\u2019s ethnic minority advisor, documents a large-scale program in the Tibet Autonomous Region that pushed more than half a million rural Tibetans off their land and into military-style training centers in just the first seven months of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TAR spans about half of Tibet, a historically independent country that China annexed more than 60 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reuters carried an exclusive report on the findings<\/a> and said it had \u201ccorroborated Zenz\u2019s findings and found additional policy documents, company reports, procurement filings and state media reports that describe the program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After their coerced training, many of the Tibetans were sent to other areas of Tibet and China and pushed into low-wage factory and construction work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parliamentarians say this system is frighteningly similar<\/a> to coercive labor in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim ethnic groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFollowing on from the global outcry in the wake of revelations of \u2018vocational training\u2019 programs in the Uyghur Region, this report shows that the current leadership of the People\u2019s Republic of China remains undeterred in its refusal to respect basic human rights standards, and unswayed by criticism from the international community,\u201d the parliamentarians say in a statement today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three steps for governments to take<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In response to China\u2019s egregious behavior, the parliamentarians outline three steps for their governments to take:<\/p>\n\n\n\n