V. Inadequate Consultation and Remedies

The government shows the way, the masses choose freely.

—Official slogan about nomadic herders settlement programs

They [local government officials] said we had to move and relocate at the end of the valley. People thought of opposing it but it is too dangerous, who wants to be arrested?

—Tenzin Gyaltso, a villager from Gyama, TAR, June 2012

Inadequate Consultation

The Chinese government does not claim that rehousing or relocation policies are carried out after consultations with the targeted Tibetan communities. Rather, it maintains that these policies have been “scientifically”designed by central authorities in Beijing as the appropriate strategy for meeting the development objectives fixed by the nationwide campaign to “Build a New Socialist Countryside” in Tibetan areas.[146] The design of policies affecting herders and nomads subject to mass resettlement programs initiated in the early 2000s was similarly “scientifically” determined and did not involve genuine consultation. The removal of herders from fragile grassland was presented as a necessity.[147]

There is almost no public information about the decision making process that led the central authorities to develop relocation or rehousing policies, or about the pilot projects conducted in the TAR in 2003-2005. It is unclear whether the general public participated in any meaningful way in the design of the policies.

Most Tibetans interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that communities learned about relocation or rehousing plans in the context of the New Socialist Countryside campaign from public meetings convened by village leaders or from state media, and only then when they were about to go into effect. One interviewee from Qinghai province described how the policy was announced to his community of semi-nomadic herders:

The township leaders came to the pastoral areas to make the announcement. They said that they were protecting and monitoring the environment of the upper Machu in Qinghai […] and so we Tibetans had to leave our land.[148]

On paper, the government has significant consultative mechanisms, notably the People’s Congresses and the People’s Consultative Political Conferences, as well as village party committees, residential and neighborhood committees, and other such bodies that supposedly can serve a consultative purpose. But there is no evidence that these mechanisms—which do not meet publicly—were used to consult communities. Instead, they were tasked with relaying policy objectives set by higher authorities.

In 2006, the TAR government produced a 379-page report on the Comfortable Housing campaign.[149] It is the most detailed and authoritative document on the topic ever made public by the Chinese government. Yet the participation of Tibetan or other ethnic minority experts seems to have been negligible: out of the 26 authors listed, there is only one Tibetan name. The volume does not mention consultations with local residents or other efforts to engage the public during the development of the policy. Human Rights Watch can find no evidence that any such consultations took place before or since its publication.

In the Comfortable Housing report, relocation and rehousing were identified as the correct model for rural development for both herders and farmers due to Tibet’s geographical location and its alleged “weak ability to develop on its own.”[150] As a result of this report, specific targets for the number of households to be resettled were included in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) for the TAR and the other provinces with a significant Tibetan population (Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan), accompanied by a host of national and local policy documents setting out all the modalities of the campaign. For the TAR, the comfortable housing project aimed at rehousing and sometimes relocating 1.4 million people. Local governments then set out to implement the policy in their respective jurisdictions so as to meet the numerical objectives within five years. This blueprint did not include consultation procedures.

Rural Tibetans who were interviewed for this report were initially unclear about the practical implications of the campaign to build New Socialist Villages when it was announced, such as if and when they would have to move, and under what conditions. However, they said there was no ambiguity about whether they would have to comply with this new policy.

While some villagers said they had agreed to the move willingly, one villager from Changdu (Tib. Chamdo), TAR, told Human Rights Watch that local authorities had announced the resettlement as unchallengeable, while highlighting government subsidies they would receive if they moved:

The village leaders were announcing that the government would give money. They said the [Comfortable Housing] policy had been decided by the government and that no one could oppose it.[151]

By the end of 2011, the government claimed that the program had fully met its objective of rehousing through renovation, reconstruction, or relocation, 1.4 million people and that the Comfortable Housing campaign in the TAR would further rehouse and relocate 185,500 rural households—over 900,000 people—by the end of 2014.[152]

Lack of Remedies

Communities targeted for settlement or resettlement have few effective legal avenues to appeal governmental decisions. Few of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch thought they had the right or ability to challenge officials regarding land ownership issues. One interviewee from Gyama, a valley north-east of Lhasa Municipality, said:

No one here would think of complaining to the local authorities. Whatever local people think about these policies, they just talk among themselves […] Since I am uneducated I have to listen to whatever orders officials give, that’s the sad truth.[153]

He went on to say that when local villagers registered opposition to being relocated, local officials told them, “This is not your land, this is state land.”[154] Another interviewee from Qushui (Tib . Chushur) county recounted a similar story, saying that that local leaders said they had to follow resettlement orders no matter what, given that by law “all the land belongs to the State.”[155]

China’s land rights system offers little protection to rural residents, as exemplified by the acute problem of illegal land grabs throughout the country.[156] The situation is even more critical for Tibetan herders, who have virtually no legal entitlement to land since the adoption of the 2003 revisions to the Grassland Law. (See above, Section III.) Awareness of law and rights also remains very low. Most people lack the education and Chinese language proficiency necessary to make use of the legal system.

Besides, policy documents directing the relocation or rehousing of rural Tibetans typically do not include provisions regarding the rights of and remedies for the population targeted. For instance, the January 2008 notice on “Protection Methods in the Reverting Pasture to Grassland Project, Grassland Degradation and Reseeding of Grasslands (for trial implementation),”[157]issued by the Guoluo [Tib. Golog] Prefecture People’s Government, includes 17 regulations. None mention rights or appeal procedures for the affected people.

Tibetans from both herders and farmers communities interviewed for this report were not surprised at the lack of prior consultation or ways to appeal government decisions, which they viewed as wholly consistent with past practice. They insisted that Tibetans living in China are in any case politically disenfranchised, that local residents are ill-equipped to deal with an unresponsive or hostile bureaucracy, and that there are no avenues for ordinary Tibetans to make their voices heard.