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Upholding its repeated claim over Tibet, China is now using books as a tool to distort the view of its invasion of Tibet and justify its wrongful claims over the region.
By publishing and distributing multilingual versions of the history books to books written by Chinese President Xi Jinping himself, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to paint China's version of the history of Tibet in the young minds, a Tibet Rights Collectives report said. Some reports have suggested that China has been trying to introduce the Chinese Communist Party-approved "Encyclopedia of Ethnic Unity and Progress (Tibet Volume)" in schools and colleges in Tibet, which observes China's version of the history of Tibet. Reports have also suggested that CCP is publishing and distributing multilingual versions of the book "Excerpts from Xi Jinping's Discussions on Respecting and Protecting Human Rights" in areas of Tibet. The Chinese-Russian, Chinese-French, Chinese-Spanish and Chinese-Japanese versions of the discourses were compiled and translated by the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the Tibet Rights Collectives reported. A Chinese media in an article published on September 11 observed a book "When Serfs Stood up in Tibet", written by American writer Anna Louis Strong in 1965 as one of the best books for anyone to understand the history of Tibet's democratic reform. The article said that in 12 chapters, Strong makes an important observation about Tibet, the snowy plateau, as part of the foreign press in 1959, when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) suppressed a rebellion seeking to overturn democratic reform. "According to Strong's personal observations, Tibet was undergoing a dramatic reform, which rejuvenated this snowy plateau". This is in tune with the CCP's version of Tibet's history and its narrative that China "liberated" Tibet, which is a distorted version of real history. The article went on to criticize the "Uncritical thinking, lazy reporting, and even deliberate misreading of Tibet" which, it said, "are still prevalent in Western media sources". "These are arm-chair writers who hold the view that Tibet is the one that exists only in their imagination, refusing to recognize or willing to admit "actual development" in the real Tibet", it claimed. Any attack or criticism against China's treatment of Tibetans in Tibet is dubbed as disinformation and as reluctance to accept China's development initiatives in Tibet, the Tibet Rights Collectives reported. It is ironic that a chief who has been accused of human rights violations in regions like Tibet and Xinjiang is being celebrated for his work on human rights. The then UN Human Rights Head Michelle Bachelet, while on her controversial visit to China, was presented with this book of Xi's quotations on human rights -- images that were circulated widely across Chinese media, the Tibet Rights Collectives reported. Notably, China claims that Tibet has always been part of China, whereas historical documents prove that Tibet has been an independent country with its own flag, and army and has signed treaties with other kingdoms. Scholars have also argued that Tibet has always been an independent country with its own army, flag and passport and at no point in history has Tibet been a part of China. (ANI)
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