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China weaponizes zero-Covid policy to subdue Tibetans: Report

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China weaponizes zero-Covid policy to subdue Tibetans: Report

Chinese Communist Party’s lockdown measures have become a tool for more surveillance and control over the Tibetans, reported Marco Respinti in Bitter Winter, an Italy-based magazine on religious liberty and human rights. The “Zero COVID” policy of President Xi Jinping has been a great tool for repression. Lockdowns and similar measures greatly helped the regime to implement its gigantic and hyper-technological system of control and surveillance of its citizens, under the pretext of protecting their health.

The victims of the COVID-age repression have been again religious groups, ethnic minorities, and all sorts of dissenters and dissidents, said Respinti. “Voice of America (VoA)”, in an article on September 22, brilliantly summarized the situation, stating that “Tibetans are monitored more heavily and face harsher repercussions than people elsewhere because of the political sensitivity of the region.”

Especially in the historic capital Lhasa, people were “quarantined in empty stadiums, schools, warehouses and unfinished buildings. “The situation in Tibet was unbearable and protests began first on social media in September to go then to the streets on October 27 against a lockdown imposed since August 8, reported Bitter Winter.

Tibetans were even arrested for daring to share online COVID-related photos and videos. Media reported the case of a nomad, Rinchen Dhondup, and other six fellow Tibetans who were arrested on September 14 for this reason. Other Tibetans were arrested in Lhasa, Nagqhu, and other counties for similar crimes.

Of all this repressive policy against Tibetans using the supposedly anti-COVID measures, one key point is especially alarming. First, to ascertain infections, Tibetans were massively compelled to undertake antigen tests, said Respinti.

Social media showed pictures and footage of Tibetans standing in huge lines on some rocky paths under icy rain. Many were women with their little children: all had to wait in harsh conditions for being tested. Secondly, even some people who tested negative were separated from others, quarantined, and monitored again and again, reported Bitter Winter.

As reported by VoA, a Tibetan man and his three young children were taken to the Lhasa Beijing Middle School Quarantine Centre after the man’s wife’s anti-COVID test was inconclusive. “Authorities,” reports VoA, “required the entire family to quarantine with 800 people. “Two of those young kids “developed fevers in the school facility where there were no doctors, medicine or medical treatments.” It is quite difficult to describe this as a measure to protect the health of Tibetans, said Respinti.

Again, “in a viral audio recording, a Tibetan father pleads with a government official at one of the Lhasa quarantine centres to not separate him from his year-old child” even though they had all tested negative for COVID. “Now we have tested positive,” the Tibetan father lamented, “and you want to take away our child.” Once more, it is rather difficult to describe this as a measure to protect the health of Tibetans.

China, a totalitarian regime manages the health of highly controlled and repressed people such as the Tibetans. In a totalitarian country such as the CCP-led China, the horrendous practice of organ harvesting whose victims are those the CCP target as enemies is a huge and prosperous industry.

DNA profiling and the strict monitoring of the health conditions of the designated victims is of course strategic for organ harvesting. The Chinese lockdown measures are tools to control the citizens even more strictly, and the antigenic tests on Tibetans are a tool in the hands of the organ harvesters, said Respinti.

–Beijing News, Jan 28, 2023