A MAJOR undercover investigation has exposed religious and political oppression by the Chinese government in Tibet.
A reporter working for ITV spent a year secretly filming while avoiding police checkpoints to show the plight of the more than seven million Tibetans trapped under Beijing’s rule.
China’s UK embassy has demanded the cancellation of the exposé, set to air on ITV1 tonight.
Officials claimed the documentary Inside China: The Battle for Tibet is “filled with bias and false accusations”. And they insisted the tightly guarded country has seen “continued and sound economic growth, social harmony and stability”. They added “human rights are at their historical best”.
Tonight’s documentary tells a different story.
It reveals up to a million children have been placed in boarding schools where they are taught in Mandarin and “moulded” into citizens loyal to China and the Communist Party.
One mother says her children “don’t speak our language. We can’t teach the kids Tibetan. They don’t listen to us.”
Disturbing footage appeared to show widespread child abuse, with a headmaster seen beating a boy around the head in one clip, while another showed a teacher hitting a child on the hands with a stick, attacking him with a chair and throwing him on to a table.
In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the film-maker – known simply as Chang to protect his identity – claims there are police checkpoints with high-tech surveillance “every 500 metres”.
Cyber security expert Greg Walton says: “Everyday activities, such as language preservation and passing on traditional Tibetan practices, are being criminalised.
“Surveillance is at the heart of this process of subjugating the Tibetan people, of making them Chinese.”
Chang also interviews a high- ranking official, who says that government employees are no longer allowed to practice their religion as part of a crackdown on Buddhism.
Supporters of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader who has been in exile in India since a failed uprising against Chinese rule
in 1959, also faced severe punishment.
A young Tibetan woman named Namkyi told Chang she was arrested, beaten and sentenced to three years in jail aged 15 simply for being in possession of a photo of the Dalai Lama, who turns 90 in July.
China, which invaded Tibet 75 years ago, still considers him a dangerous threat. But Namkyi, who fled Tibet for neighbouring India after her release, says she is among millions who remain, often silently, defiant.
She added: “China certainly gives us huge repression, both mentally and physically. However, our faith and trust is never diminished.”
