Taipei 5 September : Chinese authorities have been collecting DNA samples across Tibet including from children in kindergarten, without the consent of their parents, Human Rights Watch has reported, The Guardian reported.In a report published on Monday, the rights organization claimed that new evidence has been discovered of the systematic collection of DNA for all populations in Tibet in the context of an “crime detection” campaign, The Guardian reported.
“There is no evidence publicly available to suggest that individuals are unable to participate in the collection or that police have evidence of criminal behavior that could justification for such gathering,” it said, saying that the mass collection of data for this purpose was a grave human rights violation in that it “cannot be justified as being necessary or appropriate”.
The DNA collection initiatives described in Monday’s report started in the year 2019 as part of a police initiative dubbed the “three greats” (inspection investigation, inspection and mediation) that was designed to improve China’s extensive grassroots police system.
The report also mentioned two government tenders for creation of local DNA databases in 2019.
Citing publicly accessible press releases from the state and police, Human Rights Watch identified drives in 14 distinct locales across all prefecture-level regions in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) which includes a whole prefecture, two counties two towns two townships, and seven villages.
The group also identified certain collection drives in Tibetan regions that are not part of the TAR, The Guardian reported.
The report described the operation as “intrusive police policing” that took the DNA of all residents of some villages, which includes children as young as 5 or of all male residents.
In a report issued in January police reported their efforts in Chonggye county to carry out DNA and information registration collection.
“No village is allowed to be removed from a township.
No household is allowed to be removed from the village, and no individual should be excluded from the household,” it said.
Tibet is in Chinese control since the time it was annexed more than 70 years ago in what Tibetans call an invasion that Beijing insists was peaceful release of theocratic control.
It is one of the border regions that include Xinjiang and Mongolia which have been subject to a long-running crackdown on the cultural and religious practices of minorities that are not Han, The Guardian reported.
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