Ethnic Minority Rights
Chinese authorities have begun what Human Rights Watch reports may be a politically motivated attack on the family and friends of Rebiya Kadeer, the recently released Uighur political prisoner now living in Washington, DC. Chinese authorities warned Kadeer before her release in March that her businesses and children would suffer the consequences if she revealed "sensitive" information overseas about the Muslim Uighurs. Chinese government control over the Uighurs has become increasingly repressive over the last decade, and Kadeer has pledged to bring the plight of "my children, the entire Uighur people" to the attention of the international community.
The Communist Party Central Committee appointed Zhang Qingli, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), and commander of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), to be the acting Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) Party Committee, according to a November 27 Reuters report. Zhang replaces Yang Chuantang, who suffered a stroke in November after taking over as the TAR Party secretary in December 2004.
Zhang Shuguang, Director of the Transportation Bureau of the Ministry of Railways, announced that the Qinghai-Tibet railroad will begin commercial operation on July 1, 2006, according to December 12 articles in Xinhua and China Daily. Zhang said that direct connection to the new railway line will be available at Beijing's West Railway Station from July 1, according to Xinhua, and that other Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, will launch direct railway passenger service to Lhasa on July 1.
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government and the region’s Communist Party Committee convened a meeting on elementary and middle school bilingual education on December 4, according to a Xinjiang City News report posted December 5 on the Tianshan Net Web site. Ismail Tiliwaldi, Chairman of the XUAR government, stressed the importance of bilingual education in fostering the economic and social development of minority groups. He outlined two approaches for improving bilingual competency among ethnic minorities: strengthening skills from childhood through bilingual pre-school education, and raising the quality of the teaching staff in the XUAR. Tiliwaldi called for better bilingual skills among pre-school students by combining ethnic minority students with Han students in schools that place primacy on instruction in Mandarin Chinese.
Gyaltsen Norbu, the boy the Chinese government installed as the Panchen Lama, concluded a Buddhist ritual offering at the tombs of his predecessors by saying that he would "live up to the expectations of the Chinese Communist Party and the central government," according to a December 15 Xinhua report. The ritual took place one week after the 10th anniversary of the December 8, 1995, ceremony at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where State Councilor Li Tieying presided over then five-year-old Gyaltsen Norbu's installation as Panchen Lama, according to the China Tibet Information Center.
The State Council (SC) announced new Provisions on Implementing the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law on May 31, just days after a National Conference on Ethnic Work ended and Communist Party leaders convened a special Politburo Meeting on Ethnic Affairs.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) will give out 90,000 free HIV/AIDS prevention guides to members of China's ethnic minority communities, according to an MOH announcement on November 30 reported in Xinhua. The MOH subsidized publication of a Chinese-language guide translated into Uighur, Tibetan, Kazak, Korean, and Mongolian. It will give out the guides to village-level health care facilities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, and the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang. This news coincided with the Chinese government’s announcement on the same day that it has budgeted $100 million for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, according to a China Daily report.
November 3, 2005 - Revised by the 30th Standing Committee Meeting of the 9th Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region People's Congress on 20 September 2002 in accordance with the "Decision to Revise the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Regulation on Minority Language Work"
Authorities in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region shut down two popular Mongolian-language Web sites (Ehoron, or "homeland" and Monghal, translated as "eternal fire") on September 26 for posting what officials are calling "separatist" content, according to the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center. The closures came just one day after the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Council Information Office announced stringent new controls over Internet news services, and during an intensified Strike Hard Campaign against the "three evils" of separatism, international terrorism, and religious extremism throughout many of the country's autonomous regions.
Officials in the Lhasa area are increasing both supervision of "patriotic education" programs conducted in Tibetan monasteries and nunneries and examinations of monks and nuns, according to a report by the India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) on October 13.