China replicates Xinjiang's military-style training centers in Tibet

London [UK], September 22 : As the world continues to condemn China's ongoing human rights violation in Xinjiang, Beijing is busy pushing Tibetan rural labourers into recently built military-style training centers to forcefully train them as factory workers.
After reviewing over a hundred state media reports, policy documents from government bureaus in Tibet and procurement requests released between 2016-2020, Reuters in its exclusive report said that Beijing has set quotas for the mass transfer of rural labourers within Tibet and to other parts of China. This quota is part of the initiative designed to provide loyal workers for the Chinese market.
Reuters reported that a notice posted to the website of Tibet's regional government website last month said over half a million people were trained as part of the project in the first seven months of 2020 - around 15% of the region's population. While about 50,000 people have been given jobs within Tibet, several thousands have reportedly been sent to other parts of China.
Adrian Zenz, an independent Tibet and Xinjiang researcher, who compiled the core findings about the programme, was quoted as saying, "This is now, in my opinion, the strongest, most clear and targeted attack on traditional Tibetan livelihoods that we have seen almost since the Cultural Revolution."
Meanwhile, the China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied any involvement of forced labour.
"What these people with ulterior motives are calling 'forced labour' simply does not exist. We hope the international community will distinguish right from wrong, respect facts, and not be fooled by lies," it said.
While the movement of surplus labour into the industry is China's move to boost the economy and reduce poverty, in the case of Xinjiang and Tibet the analysts believe that it is a move to train the population ideologically. Besides, the government quotas and military-style management suggest that the transfers are symbols of coercion.
According to the Reuters report, the Tibetan programme is expanding as international pressure is growing over similar projects in Xinjiang, some of which have been linked to mass detention centers.
However, Reuters was unable to ascertain the conditions of the transferred Tibetan workers as foreign journalists are not permitted to enter the region, and other foreign citizens are only permitted on government-approved tours.
Similar to that of Xinjiang, the state officials had carried out more than a thousand anti-separatism education sessions in villages near the Tibetan capital apparently to allow "people of all ethnic groups to feel the care and concern of the Party Central Committee."
According to the state media reports, these sessions included songs, dances and sketches in "easy to understand language". Such "education" work took place prior to the rollout of the wider transfers this year, Reuters reported.
The government documents reviewed by Reuters emphasised on the ideological education to correct the "thinking concepts" of labourers. "There is the assertion that minorities are low in discipline, that their minds must be changed, that they must be convinced to participate," said Zenz.
The exclusive report by Reuters said, "Rural workers who are moved into vocational training centers receive ideological education - what China calls "military-style" training - according to multiple Tibetan regional and district-level policy documents describing the program in late 2019 and 2020. The training emphasizes strict discipline, and participants are required to perform military drills and dress in uniforms."
In both Xinjiang and Tibet, it was former Tibet Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who took over the same post in Xinjiang in 2016 and took charge of the development of Xinjiang's camp system.
"In Tibet, he was doing a slightly lower level, under the radar, version of what was implemented in Xinjiang," Allen Carlson, Associate Professor in Cornell University's Government Department, was quoted as saying.