Tibet Nepal Friendship Highway
The 850-kilometer-long Friendship Highway was completed and opened to traffic in 1967, with 736 kilometers in China and 114 kilometers in Nepal. It is Tibet's sole outbound highway leading to overseas. The highway itself starts from Lhasa, passing the turquoise Yamdrok Lake, through Chusu, Shigatse, Lhaze, Dingri, Nielamu, on to the Nepali border at Zhangmu, and ends at the defense highway of Katmandu, capital of the Kingdom of Nepal.
The following is from FreeTibet.org:
Every aspect of Tibetan life is under siege from a Chinese leadership determined to gradually eradicate a whole culture.
The Tibetan flag and national anthem are banned. Possession of a picture of the Dalai Lama can result in torture and imprisonment.
Even children face abuses of their freedom and human rights in Tibet.
Here are just a few human rights case studies of people who have suffered abuses under China's regime.
No right to protest
Tibetans are not free to protest or openly speak about their situation. Even peaceful demonstrations are met with heavy handed, military crackdowns.
Chinese authorities arrested an estimated 6,000 protestors, of which the fate of about 1,000 still remains unknown.
The upsurge in self-immolations and other protests since 2011 has led the Chinese authorities to step up security and attempt to impose even tighter control over Tibet.
Prisons in Tibet are full of people detained for simply expressing their desire for freedom. People have been arrested and sentenced to prison for peaceful acts, such as:
Many Tibetans are imprisoned on unclear or unspecified charges, their families not informed of their whereabouts.
Released prisoners report of having been subjected to beatings, electric shocks, and being deprived of food and drink. A 2008 UN report found that the use of torture in Tibet was ‘widespread’ and ‘routine’.
Read more about torture in Tibet and see a list of just some political prisoners.
China attempts to control all information in and out of Tibet. TV, radio, printed media and the internet are subjected to strict monitoring and censorship.
Access is blocked to TV and radio broadcasters based outside China, which provide news services in Tibetan languages.
Foreign journalists are rarely allowed entry into Tibet, and when they are, they are closely chaperoned by Chinese officials.
Reporters Without Borders ranked China 175 out of the 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index 2014. Professor Carole McGranahan has also stated that there are more foreign journalists in North Korea than Tibet.
Lack of religious freedom
Monks and nuns have been beaten, jailed and tortured.
They are regularly subjected to ‘patriotic re-education programmes’, for weeks at a time.
During these programmes, they are forced to read ‘patriotic’ literature denouncing the Dalai Lama.
Those who refuse to take part, or fail the programme, often have their rights to practice as monks and nuns taken away.
A US State Department human rights report published in May 2012 said that "ethnic Han Chinese Communist Party members hold almost all top government, police, and military positions in the Tibet Autonomous Region and other areas of Tibet."
"Tibet today is one of the most repressed and closed societies in the world."
Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 2012
After a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, Tibet’s political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India followed by tens of thousands of Tibetans.
Inside its borders and across the world, Tibetans have never stopped believing Tibet is a nation. Since 1959, they have continued to oppose and resist China's rule and China has responded with intense repression.
In 2014, US think tank Freedom House ranked Tibet among the twelve worst countries in the world for repression of political and civil rights.
Here are just some of the challenges faced by Tibetans as a result of China's occupation.
Read more about the treatment of monks and nuns in Tibet.
