International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women
November 25th, 2000: In observation of International Day of Violence against women, the Tibetan Women's Association (TWA) is issuing this statement to inform people of the inequalities suffered by women world-wide and in particular the gross injustices endured by women in Tibet. The United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) created a treaty pursuing women's equality. China was one of the 126 nations to ratify CEDAW. In the wake of global interdependence, human rights abuses have become an international concern. These abuses violate the individual's basic human rights and condemning methods of suppression. The denial of basic human rights is an act of violence committed against the will of the individual. These acts of violence do not only violate the individual, but perpetuates injustice within society when suppression receives little or no acknowledgement.
Since the Chinese invasion of 1959, the government in Beijing
has used methods to violate and degrade the
Tibetan people into submission. The tactics used by the government
of China have especially affected Tibetan women. Tibetan women face
dual discrimination, firstly for being Tibetans and second for their
gender.
The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action defines acts of violence against
women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in,
or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm
or suffering to women". This definition is further extended
to include "violence perpetuated or condoned by the state…forced
prostitution, forced sterilization, forced abortion, coecive/forced
use of contraception." Although China being party to CEDAW
has theoretically accepted this definition, nothing has changed
in reality for Tibetan women. Women in Tibet face gender specific,
sexually demoralizing discrimination, including torture, forced
sterilization, forced birth control, sexual harassment in educational
institutions and in the workplace, and prostitution.
In order to silence opposition to its occupation,
China has reacted violently to Tibetan protests. Political prisoners
face inhuman forms of torture such as deprivation of food and water,
intentional subjection to extreme cold and hot temperatures, beatings
with iron bars and nail-studded sticks, brandings with hot shovels,
urinating in the victims mouth, extraction of bodily fluids to induce
weakness and hanging prisoners upside down by their thumbs.
According to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, around thirty-five percent of the political prisoners incarcerated in Tibet are women. Women political prisoners undergo the worst form of gender-specific torture. Often these tortures take the form of repeated raping, forced penetration of women's anuses, vaginas and mouths, with electric batons. Political prisoners includings women prisoners of conscience have to suffer such cruel and degrading treatment as a punishment for participating in peaceful protest and refusing to denounce their spiritual and political leader, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. Reports emanating from Tibet, also indicate several cases of brutal beatings of pregnant women leading to miscarriages. Nuns form the majority of women political prisoners accounting for 80% of the women in prison. After such demoralizing forms of sexual torture which violate their vows, many nuns feel that they are no longer pure. As a result, many leave the religious life dejected. Sexual torture has the double offense of violating both a nun's human rights and her religious vows.
Women who are outside the prison system also encounter aggregious human rights abuses. Despite the fact that Tibet is a sparsely populated region, many women are forcibly sterilized or limited to one or two children in accordance with Chinese state-enforced population control. It is practically impossible for a woman to have more than two children as an additional child has no status and is unacknowledged and is unregistered by the Chinese state. In the Tibetan culture, motherhood and family is strongly valued. This type of oppression damages the women not only physically, but psychologically by taking away their ability to choose to have children. Moreover women who are forcibly sterilized have to pay for operations preformed against their will. The safety standards are practically non-existent, leaving many women with severe complications such as these dangerous operations. Furthermore, many women do not even know that they have been sterilized. Often a woman will enter a hospital for a totally unrelated ailment and leave not being able to bare children. Such circumstances make women reluctant to seek attention even in dire cases of illness.
In the light of this reality, TWA would like to call upon the international community to denounce violence against women in Tibet. TWA would also like to unite with other International women's NGO's to combat violence committed against women.
Tibetan Women's Association