23 March 2008
Accusations against the "masterminds" of China’s ethnic policy
(The Times) The Times of London has identified three men who they accuse of being "the architects of Chinese repression in Tibet". The three are senior bureaucrats little known to the outside world but, according to the Times, are "destined to be the focus of condemnation from human rights groups in the months ahead". The newspaper sayd that Wang Lequan, party head in Xinjiang, is responsible for Beijing’s minority policies in both the TAR and Xinjiang. He devised the model that has stifled Muslim culture in Xinjiang, staged political trials and executions, poured in millions of Chinese settlers and extracted mineral and energy resources to feed the economy. Applying Wang’s methods in Tibet is Zhang Qingli, the region’s party secretary. Zhang accelerated campaigns against Tibetan culture and religion, brought in more settlers and stepped up the commercial exploitation of Tibet’s huge reserves of raw materials, the Times said. The third influential figure identified by the Times is Li Dezhu, the Party’s racial theoretician. Until recently the head of the Ethnic Affairs Commission, Li wrote the textbook on destroying independent cultures and disintegrating religious minorities by promoting materialism. He refined Chinese policy, stating that its aim was no longer to preserve minority cultures such as the Tibetans but to refashion them. The Times quotes Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch, who says Li is the first leader explicitly to state that the problem of minorities would be "definitively solved" by mass Chinese migration.