Chinese repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs: ‘Switzerland must take action now’

Tibetan and Uyghur people pause for a moment of silence to honour all victims at a rally on the Place des Nations in front of the UN's European headquarters in Geneva on September 16, 2016. Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

The world’s first government-commissioned study, by Switzerland, on intimidation of Tibetan and Uyghur communities sheds a light on transnational repression by China. Are countries such as Switzerland doing enough to protect its people from transnational repression?

Switzerland is often considered the human rights capital of the world due to the presence of numerous international organisations. However, for Uyghurs and Tibetans living in the country, who still feel they can’t escape China’s surveillance, intimidation and threats, it’s also seen as a place where they often confront their cross-border oppressors.

“We are aware that we are subjected to surveillance, especially on the internet,” Arya Amipa, co-president of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe, who lives in Switzerland, told SWI swissinfo.ch. “We keep receiving suspicious emails asking us to send confidential data, such as renewing our email passwords, from what at first glance appears to be our email provider. It’s only when you look closer that you notice the email address changes when you hover over it.”

Amipa believes that the Chinese government is behind these phishing operations with targets in the Tibetan diaspora communities. So “we have to protect ourselves by using end-to-end encrypted messengers, two-factor identification, and VPN clients”, even when communicating with others in Switzerland.

Arya Amipa, co-president of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe Arya Amipa

Jigme Adotsang, a systems engineer in Switzerland who is a second-generation Tibetan-Swiss, also experienced China’s surveillance. He says that at public events and demonstrations by the Tibetan community “again and again, on the fringes of such events, we notice unknown people of Asian origin carrying large cameras”, sometimes equipped with long lenses that can capture the faces well. “As they aren’t bothered to be seen, it looks more like intimidation tactics.”

The consequence, he says, is that “fear has increased, especially among young Tibetans” and many Tibetans don’t take part in protests anymore. Adotsang shared his experience of China’s surveillanceExternal link with Swiss NGO Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker (Society for Threatened Peoples).

The claims of Amipa and Adotsang are backed up by a recently released report, “Situation of Tibetans and Uyghurs in Switzerland”, based on the findings of a University of Basel study commissioned by the Swiss government. This details extensive surveillance and pressure tactics by Chinese authorities against Tibetan and Uyghur individuals residing in Switzerland.

The research report concluded that it’s “highly probable” that members of the Tibetan and Uyghur communities in Switzerland are “systematically monitored, threatened, and co-opted by actors from China”. The Swiss government added that “the extent and intensity of the forms of pressure identified in this research report are more likely to be underreported than overreported”. This is partly because the perpetrators often operate in the shadows and the targets fear reprisals if they speak out about their experiences.

Read more about the study released on the extent to which Tibetan and Uighur communities in Switzerland are subject to surveillance and intimidation by China:

Response to China’s transnational repression

The Swiss report is the first of its kind in the international sphere. Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, vice president of Washington-based NGO Freedom House, wroteExternal link that China, which tops the list of countries for transnational repression and “conducts the most comprehensive and sophisticated campaign of transnational repression in the world, is responsible for 30% of the cases”.

China’s transnational repression has become a hot topic over the past year, but the phenomenon is not new. Some Western governments have taken steps in recent years to address the issue more meaningfully.

The US government formally addressed the problem first in 2023. A bipartisan group of US senators introduced the Transnational Repression Policy ActExternal link, which aims to “hold foreign governments and individuals accountable when they stalk, intimidate or assault people in the United States and US citizens abroad”. The US is also the only country so far to have dedicated great resources at all levels of government to understand the issue and propose meaningful action points, such as establishing hotlines for those experiencing transnational repression and conducting consultations with the affected communities.

Canada and Germany have made similar efforts, the World Uyghur Congress told SWI swissinfo.ch. “We hope like-minded governments can work together to counter all of this.”

The World Uyghur Congress confirms that Uyghurs face increasing levels of transnational repression abroad through surveillance technologies including WeChat and the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), a policing program based on big data analytics in Xinjiang, harassment through video and phone calls, malware, spyware, hacking and espionage. But “we are not aware of any resources or tools available to address this issue within the Swiss context” it told SWI swissinfo.ch.

Transnational repression

The tactics employed by governments to police their diasporas abroad – including threats of violence, deportation and harm to people’s families but also offers of money or family contact in return for conducting surveillance of their own community abroad or changes in behaviour and personal associations – are known as transnational repression.

Long-awaited report delayed

Some 8,000 Tibetans are estimated to live in Switzerland, making it one of the largest Tibetan exile communities outside India. The Uyghur community, however, is in the double or low triple digits. Both communities have awaited the Swiss report for years.

The report was produced after a parliamentary postulate in 2020. Normally, a postulate should be answered within two years, so the report should have been published two years ago, according to Nicolas Walder, a member of the House of Representatives and the Foreign Affairs Committee, who submitted the postulate.

However, Walder says the report has been delayed three times, “each time without good reason”. The State Secretariat for Migration, which commissioned the external expert report on behalf of the government, attributed the reasons to the subordination of the processing of the report to the priority with the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 and the implementation of protection status S for refugees in Switzerland. “The processing of the results of the report took longer than originally planned,” it admitted to SWI swissinfo.ch.

Hesitance of Swiss authorities

Amipa from the Tibetan Youth Association believes that the delay in releasing the report is because Switzerland doesn’t want to enrage its largest trading partner in Asia. However, he thinks that “remaining silent and inactive on these issues is an active choice to allow the atrocities to continue”.

Switzerland followed a “change through trade” approach regarding China for decades. That means Switzerland believed that trade would bring about positive changes, including a greater emphasis on human rights, as China gradually opened up. But the past ten years have shown the opposite to be true. China’s treatment of Tibetans and Uyghurs, including the diaspora, has deteriorated sharply.

Regarding the actions of the Swiss authorities, the research report indicates that a perceived tightening of restrictions on peaceful demonstrations and asylum practices is described as a form of pressure.

For example, the documents of Tibetans in Switzerland used to give “stateless” as their country of origin. Now it says “China”. This change forces Tibetans to have regular contact with the Chinese consulate, exposing them to registration and further surveillance and intimidation by Chinese officials who remind them not to engage in political activities.

Migmar Dolma, a 33-year-old Swiss citizen of Tibetan heritage, expressed to SWI swissinfo.ch her disappointment at the Swiss authorities’ hesitance and failure to address the violation of the democratic rights of Tibetans in the country.

At a political demonstration in 2014, she was forcibly grabbed, pushed and held to the ground by Chinese embassy officials. She filed a complaint against an unknown person in the footage, but the case was rejected by the public prosecutor. She believes the decision was politically motivated.

A group of Tibetans staged a silent demonstration at a cultural festival in Basel in 2014. A video shows Dolma being forcibly grabbed, pushed, and held down by unidentified men she believes to be Chinese embassy officials:

“The Swiss authorities have not fulfilled their duty to protect their citizens from the Chinese embassy’s activities,” she said. “Don’t we belong to Switzerland? Should we, Swiss people with Tibetan roots, keep our mouths shut because we should be grateful that our parents and grandparents were granted asylum? As a Swiss citizen and the daughter of Tibetan refugees, I feel ashamed to see Switzerland kowtowing to China,” she said, stressing that Switzerland must stand by its principle of promoting human rights.

‘Afraid of Chinese reaction’

“Our government is afraid of the reaction of the Chinese government,” Walder says. He believes that the government is concerned that the release of the report may affect its plan to extent the free trade agreement (FTA) with China. Not only because of Beijing’s reaction, but also because of the impact the report could have on public opinion, since the updated FTA must be approved by the Swiss people.

Parties on the left want the new free trade deal with China to include some regulations about protecting human rights that have to be followed:

Switzerland is the only European country to have signed a free trade agreement with China, apart from Iceland and Serbia. Walder thinks Switzerland has always prioritised trade interests over human rights.

“The result is that while our trade has increased by 70% since the signing of our free trade agreement in 2013, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated sharply. China’s hostile actions against Tibetans and Uyghurs in Switzerland have never been more frequent,” he says.

“The more dependent a country is on investment from China, the more likely it is to cooperate or to turn a blind eye [to transnational repression],” David TobinExternal link, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield in the UK, whose current research focuses on collecting Uyghur diaspora narratives on genocidal violence and trauma, told the BBCExternal link.

Tobin and his colleagues conducted some of the most comprehensive research on the topic of China’s transnational repression to date, interviewing and surveying more than 200 members of the Uyghur diaspora in several countries, and published their conclusions in 2023.

Among the countries he studied was Turkey, traditionally a safe haven for Uyghurs, where 50,000 live in one of the largest communities outside China, but as its economic dependence on China deepens, its tolerance for China’s transnational repression has changed dramatically.

In order to avoid a repeat of the Turkish scenario, the Swiss Social Democrats and the Greens are insisting that the new report on the Chinese regime’s violations of the fundamental rights of the Tibetan and Uighur communities in Switzerland be taken into account in the ongoing FTA negotiations with Beijing, even though the idea of including the situation of Tibetans in Switzerland and negotiating binding rules on the protection of human rights in the new FTA was narrowly rejected in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives last year.

Although the Swiss government has held several consultations with affected communities in the country experiencing Chinese transnational repression, the Swiss Tibetan Friendship Association told SWI swissinfo.ch that it was “not aware of any concrete action taken by the Swiss government”.

The recent publication of the government’s report is certainly seen as a positive signal in these circles. The report’s findings were also on the agenda for discussionExternal link at the bilateral human rights dialogue between Switzerland and China at the end of February.

But for Amipa, it’s not enough to acknowledge the reality of transnational repression for Tibetans and the Uighur diaspora. “Switzerland must take action now. These things will continue to happen as long as China doesn’t fear any consequences.”

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/ts

The identity of the author has been withheld from this story for security reasons.