Tibetan govt-in exile hails US move to bar Chinese officials who restrict access to Tibet
Jul 15, 2020
Dharmshala (Himachal Pradesh) [India], July 16 : Tibetan government-in-exile on Wednesday praised the US move to sanction visas of Chinese officials over restricted access to Tibet and said Beijing has been carrying out human right violations in Tibet.
Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had announced visa restrictions on some Chinese officials determined to be "substantially involved in the formulation or execution of policies related to access for foreigners to Tibetan areas".
Speaking to ANI, the Tibetan government-in-exile's spokesperson, TG Arya, said: "I think this is a very good step that America has taken because China needs to follow certain rules and regulations. What China has been doing in Tibet, Uighur, Mongolia is not appreciable. There is a lot of human right violations, religious freedoms are being trampled down and China is not heeding what the International community is saying.
The visa sanctions were announced under Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act. In 2018, US President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill on Tibet into law that could enrage China, paving the way to impose a visa ban on Chinese officials who deny American citizens, government officials and journalists access to Tibet.
While announcing the sanction, Pompeo said that the access to Tibetan areas is increasingly vital to regional stability, given the PRC's human rights abuses there, as well as Beijing's failure to prevent "environmental degradation near the headwaters of Asia's major rivers".
The US Secretary of State pointed out that Beijing has continued "systematically to obstruct travel to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas" by U.S. diplomats and other officials, journalists, and tourists, while PRC officials and other citizens enjoy far greater access to the United States.
Arya highlighted that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has missed certain officials who are violating human rights in China, Tibet and Hong Kong.
"Especially the party secretary Chen Wang Hu who has been very brutal in suppressing the people in Uyghur region so they have all been denied visas to the United States and there family members and relatives are also not allowed to visit the US and this is a very good step that America has taken," he said.
