New Delhi: Rights group activist Suhas Chakma on Thursday accused China of violating international humanitarian laws and organising a war crime. This comes after a report released by Human Right Watch (HRW) on Wednesday alleged China of systematically using extreme forms of pressure to coerce rural Tibetans to relocate their long-established villages.
The report claimed that since 2016, officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region had been relocating 500 villages with over 1,40,000 residents to new locations, often hundreds of kilometers away.
The 71-page report, "'Educate the Masses to Change Their Minds’: China’s Coercive Relocation of Rural Tibetans,” detailed how participation in whole-village relocation programmes in Tibet, in which entire villages are relocated, amounts to forced eviction in violation of international law.
Officials misleadingly claimed that these relocations would "improve people’s livelihood" and “protect the ecological environment.” The government prevents relocated people from returning to their former homes by generally requiring them to demolish these homes within a year of relocation.
Commenting on the development, Suhas Chakma, Director Rights and Risks Analysis Group said, "Population transfer is a violation of international humanitarian laws and a war crime. China's transfer of the Tibetans from rural areas without their consent is illegal under international law and China must stop such measures".
The HRW cited official statistics drawn from more than 1,000 reports in China’s state-run media which suggested Chinese authorities had relocated more than 930,000 rural Tibetans between 2000 and 2025. Most of these relocations – more than 709,000 people or 76 per cent of the relocations – occurred since 2016, the report mentioned.
The report also found that higher-level authorities would routinely pressure local officials to use coercive measures to achieve the goal of relocating rural Tibetans. "The higher-level authorities would routinely characterise the relocation programme as a non-negotiable policy coming straight from the national capital, Beijing, or from Lhasa, the regional capital,” the report said.
As per the report, among the 709,000 people who were relocated, 140,000 were moved as part of whole village relocation drives and 567,000 as part of individual household relocations. Entire villages were relocated hundreds of kilometers away while rural villagers and herders were dramatically relocated since 2016.
Between 2000 and 2025, a total of 3.36 million rural Tibetans were affected by other programmes requiring them to rebuild homes and adopt a sedentary way of life if found to be nomads, without necessarily being relocated, the report said.
The report stated that when a village is targeted for relocation, it is impossible for residents to refuse to move without facing serious repercussions.
The report also recommended the Chinese government to stop relocations in Tibet until an independent, expert review of policies and practices determined their compliance with Chinese laws and international law on forced evictions.
Authorities should stop coercing or improperly pressuring people to consent to government plans for relocation and they should also end all quotas, deadlines or targets for officials to persuade people to relocate, the report said.
In fact, according to the Chinese government policy, every household has to consent to relocation but HRW found multiple references to initial reluctance among Tibetans whose villages were scheduled for relocation, as per the report. In one case, 200 of 262 households in a village in Nagchu municipality initially didn’t want to relocate to a site nearly 1,000 km away.
China-Tibet ties: The relationship between China and Tibet has been complex and contentious for decades. China asserts sovereignty over Tibet, while many Tibetans advocate for greater autonomy or independence. Tibetans have faced cultural and religious restrictions, and there have been protests and international condemnation of China's policies in Tibet.
Reports of human rights violations against Tibetans by Chinese authorities have been documented by various human rights organisations and the United Nations from time to time.
These violations include restrictions on religious and cultural freedoms, arbitrary detentions, torture, and limitations on freedom of expression and movement. It's important for the international community to address such violations and advocate for the protection of human rights for all individuals, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality.
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