Demographic Annihilation in Tibet, Truth or Myth?

This is the research work done by Barry Sautman (PhD Columbia University):
Contemporary Tibet

About the author:
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The conclusion is extracted here.  I'm trying to find out how to upload the whole chapter here(10M).  It seems that it is too big to be accepted!


Conclusion
There is no evidence of a special repression of Tibetans, let alone demographic annihilation. The lack of credible evidence contrasts sharply with what was known about documented demographic catastrophes in such places as Cambodia and East Timor, long before their mass murderous regimes were overthrown (Kiernan 2003). There is a harsh state response to any political challenge to CCP rule in any part of
Table 11.2
Number of Tibetans in the PRC by Census Date

1953	1964	1982	1990	2000
2,753,081	2,501,174	3,847,875	4,593,072	5,416,021

Source: ZGMZGZNJ (2002, 698).
China. State organs involved in suppressing separatism have often violated the rights of those seeking independence through beatings and torture, but the suppression of separatism is not per se illegitimate under international law. The consensus of international organizations, states, and scholars is that states are allowed to use military and police measures to prevent secessionist activities, except in the special circumstance where to do so would endanger international peace and security (Charney and Prescott 2000; Hsiao 1998; Duursma 1996, 427-428; Weller 1992, 572). The suppression of Tibetan separatism has been no more brutal than the repression that accompanied many political campaigns waged during the PRC's first 4 decades and no more egregiously violent than more recent actions against dissident Han organizations. The lack of a sharp dichotomy in the degree of repression against majority and minority people distinctly contrasts with the practices of the colonial era.
In contrast to the fate of many colonized peoples, Tibetans have proliferated, not diminished, in number, during the more than a half-century of Communist rule (see Table 11.2). The Tibetan population increased by about 150% over almost 7 centuries, from some 1 million in 1268 to about 2.5 million in 1950, and Tibetans have more than doubled in number since then. Despite a large and growing economic gap between Tibetans and Han, reflecting their different rates of urbanity, education, and other factors, the proliferation of the Tibetan ethnic evidences a key distinction from the main contour of colonialism.
The finding that there is no evidence of demographic annihilation of Tibetans calls into question a claim central to the emigre leaders' ideological construct of a colonial occupation and shifts the burden to them to recast their argument, which is currently tangled in all manner of unsupported claims about a special oppression of Tibetans. Supporters of the emigre cause claim, for example, that one in every 100 Tibetans is in prison (Barlow 1999). The implication is that this high incarceration rate reflects state ethnic discrimination. The PRC has put the all-China incarceration rate at just under 1 per 1000 ("State Council White Paper" 1991). Western specialists say that it may actually be 1.66, higher than the world average of 1.05 per 1000, but not hugely so (Seymour 1998). In 2000, the US had the world's highest rate: 7.12 inmates per 1000 population ("U.S. System" 2000; "Nation's Prison Population" 2000), almost 7 times the world average and higher than the next contender, Russia, with 6.50 (Working 2001; Dillin 2001). Despite the very high US rate of imprisonment, it was nevertheless lower than the incredible rate of 10 per 1000 claimed for Tibetans by the emigres and their supporters.
The incarceration rate for TAR Tibetans, according to the PRC, is about 0.7 per 1000 (Xinhua 17 April 2000), seven-tenths of the official all-China rate. In the US, black males are incarcerated at 8 times the rate for white males ("A Land of Bondage" 1999), that is, 80 times the TAR Tibetan rate. Not only were one in 143 persons in the US in prison as of the end of 2001, but one in 37 US adults was either in prison or had once been there. The official estimate is that 6.6 percent of U.S. residents born in 2001 will go to prison at some point, with black males having a 1-in-3 chance, Hispanic males a 1-in-6 chance, and white males a 1-in-17 chance (Liptak 2003; "Unfree" 2003). In contrast, Qinghai, with 1.2 million Tibetans, has 1200-1500 Tibetan prisoners under any form of detention, mostly in local jails (Seymour and Anderson 1998, 168). Qinghai Tibetans are thus incarcerated at 0.12-0.15 per 1000, or 1/7 to 1/8 of the all-China rate and one 1/400 the rate for black Americans. Tibetans are mainly rural people, while African Americans are mainly urban, so a significant difference in incarceration rates is to be expected. The gap between the rates is so enormous, however, that it indicates that racial discrimination is much more likely to be a factor accounting for the racial differential in the US than it is in the Tibetan areas of China.
Some emigre claims reach fantastic proportions. A Japanese magazine, responding to Chinese criticisms that the Japanese government is not forthright about World War 2 atrocities, published an article by Tibetan emigre researcher Pema Gyalpo in which he claimed that there are 2 million political prisoners in Qinghai (Hoffman 1999). "Tibet activists" have asserted that there are more than 100,000 Tibetan political prisoners (Avedon 1984). Human rights groups quote much lower numbers. Asia Watch (1994) has stated that there were 1710 people of all PRC ethnic groups known to be in prison due to political, ethnic, or religious activities. Amnesty International (1996) pegged the number at 2,000, as have more recent Western estimates ("Please Shout Quietly" 1999). Others claim that the number may be as high as 10,000 ("China's Communist Regime" 1999). Emigres claim that Tibetans are disproportionately represented among PRC political prisoners - there were estimates of "over one hundred" and "about 150" in 2003 ("Amnesty" 2003; "Change in Pattern" 2003). This is because there is an emigre-supported separatist movement; there is no evidence that Tibetans who commit what the PRC government considers "subversion" are selectively prosecuted, or any firm reason to conclude that they are imprisoned for longer periods than others convicted of the same crime. The average sentence imposed on all Tibetan political prisoners convicted in 1987-2000 was 4 years, nine months (U.S. State Department 2002). Although there has yet to be a systematic study, among (overwhelmingly Han) labor activists convicted of "endangering state security," sentences seem to be longer, with sentences of 10 to 20 years for organizing an independent trade union not at all unusual (UAW 2003; LRN 2003).
Winston Churchill (1906, vii) once described the claims of ex-Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain for intra-empire protectionism as full of "morose, sordid and often absurd extravagancies," words that fit assertions of demographic aggression in Tibet. These claims are not unique in being taken as "facts" by Western media; there are other examples of assertions of demographic catastrophe that were first accepted and then disproved. For example, Canadian novelist James Bacque (1989) wrote a much publicized work asserting that the US and France likely killed a million Germans in post-WW2 prisoner-of-war camps. The German government found that about 56,000 of the 5 million Germans held in custody died, while Bischof and Ambrose (1992) and others demolished Bacque's sensational assertions. He nevertheless was able to bring out another book with a reputable U.S. publisher (Bacque 1997) in which he asserted that the Allies were responsible for between 9.3 and 13.7 million German deaths after the war, including 2.1-6 million civilians who died being expelled from countries east of Germany.
It is quite possible that dissident emigres will take a page from the book of U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who stated with regard to U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 war against Iraq that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. . . . Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist" (quoted in O'Toole 2002). In the Tibet case, that in effect would have the emigre leaders saying that since the PRC government cannot directly prove that it did not annihilate a significant number of Tibetans (i.e., prove a negative), the TGIE will continue to revile it for having committed "genocide." The continued leveling of such charges without evidence is no more logical than the Rumsfeld argument that war can be waged even without any evidence to support its principal justification. Imputations of demographic annihilation have mislead ordinary Tibetan exiles and those who sympathize with them. More importantly, they are an obstacle to solving the Tibet Question, affecting as they do the credibility of the Tibetan emigre leaders and thus diminishing the confidence of PRC leaders that TGIE assertions of a desire for a solution short of independence can be trusted.

[ Last edited by qwejst at 30-9-2008 18:09 ]