Tibetan nomads evicted in June from government-built housing in Qinghai’s Yulshul prefecture are now living in desolate tent settlements while their former homes are torn down to make way for Chinese development projects, local sources say.
The nomads had been forced years before from their traditional grazing areas and are now being uprooted again, a Tibetan resident of the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“Many who had sold their herds when they were first resettled have no way to return to their former lives, and the poorest among them have now resorted to begging in the nearby township just to make ends meet,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Chinese construction workers have already arrived in the area and have started to demolish the neighborhoods that were built for nomad resettlement,” the source said.
“If the government fails to provide new housing for them, the evicted Tibetans plan to live in their tents till next year,” he said.
Other nomadic groups who still owned livestock have already moved back under government orders to the nomadic areas from which they were originally removed, sources said.
The resettlement sites now vacated outside Yulshul’s Dzatoe (in Chinese, Zeduo) county seat under a policy announced last year will be developed as housing for Chinese government workers and tourists, sources told RFA in earlier reports.
Residents of a nomad resettlement village near Domda township in Yulshul’s Tridu (Chenduo) county have meanwhile also been forced from their homes and told to return to their native regions, sources said in June.
“Now the authorities are planning to demolish the houses built for the nomads and build housing instead for new Chinese migrants and tourists in the Domda area, which is known for its natural scenic beauty and good supplies of water and electricity,” one source said.
Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.