What night-time lighting tells us about Tibet's Chinese prisons and detention centres
Introduction Chinese Authorities in Tibet are engaging in preventive repression towards their population. As part of their nationwide 'stability maintenance' strategy, they are detaining, persecuting and convicting Tibetans for non-violent forms of protest and other expressions of dissent such as assisting or supporting self-immolations and carrying pictures of the Dalai Lama. The precise workings, nature and scale of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to imprison and detain Tibetans, however, remain poorly understood. In contrast with the body of knowledge on the detention and imprisonment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, the Tibetan detention system is still very much a black hole to the international community. The lack of evidence on many issues, especially on the so-called 'vocational training centres' and detention through the criminal justice system, is not evidence of the absence of repression. Rather, it highlights a need for further ...