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Human-rights groups oppose resettlement of Tibetan lands by Han farmers

Washington — Pushed by the United States and international human-rights and environmental groups, the World Bank yesterday scuttled a highly contentious loan to China to help resettle 58,000 Chinese farmers in traditionally Tibetan lands.

China’s representative to the World Bank quickly responded by saying his government would pay for the initiative on its own.

“It is unacceptable to my authorities that other bank shareholders would insist on imposing additional conditions on [the World Bank] management’s recommendations,”” Zhu Xian said in a statement.

“By such action the bank’s mission — particularly its development effectiveness — has been jeopardized. We will call for discussion on this as soon as possible.”

The 24 executive directors of the bank, including Canada, voted 14-10 against a recommendation to conduct further studies over the next 18 months and then let the bank’s president, James Wolfensohn, decide whether to go ahead without another vote, two meeting participants said.

It was unclear last night how Canada had voted on the controversial $40-million (U.S.) loan.

Critics have called the antipoverty program “cultural genocide,” saying it would generate a migration that would deplete the land and dilute the native population of ethnic Tibetans.

“Numerous other World Bank shareholders were not prepared to support the project because we do not believe it was in compliance with the bank’s own policies,” said an official of the U.S. Treasury Department.

The opposition from Washington was crucial in turning the vote — considered a test of the bank’s sensitivity to the political and social consequences of its projects. The United States is the bank’s largest shareholder and its most influential member.

China had argued strongly for the loan, part of a project totalling about $160-million, saying it would help the farmers escape barren lands and raise their standard of living. The plan was to move Han Chinese farmers in the eastern part of Qinghai province to more fertile land in the west.

Opponents, some of whom staged a vigil outside the bank in downtown Washington for five days, said the project would send more ethnic Chinese into lands populated by about 4,000 Mongol and Tibetan herdsmen — territory Tibetans consider part of their homeland.

China invaded and occupied Tibet in the 1950s, and the resettlement program is thought to be part of a campaign to assimilate Tibet and extinguish its national identity.

A visit to Washington last week by Tibet’s exiled Dalai Lama added impetus to the activists’ campaign.

“We’re so excited,” said Judy Pullen Tethong, a Canadian from Oakville, Ont., who was protesting outside the bank with her two daughters. “We shouldn’t be using tax dollars to contribute to genocide in Tibet.”

When the decision was announced, the protesters hugged and cheered, waving Tibetan flags.

Ms. Tethong feared that the bank would reject the arguments against the project to appease China. “I’m sick of seeing us abdicate our responsibility,” she said before the decision. “Our foreign policy has been hijacked by trade and corporate interests.”

The project caused dissent within the bank. Amid rising criticism, it suspended part of the project last year and ordered an internal review by a three-member committee.

The 160-page document, which was leaked last week by critics of the project, suggested that the bank had bent its rules to placate the Chinese, who wanted to borrow money for the project interest-free. Critics said the Chinese wanted the bank’s money but not the bank’s scrutiny, resenting inspection teams on its territory.

Among its reservations, the review found that the bank never fully considered other venues for resettlement.

The bank actually approved the loan a year ago but withheld the $40-million for the resettlement until it could re-examine it.

Environmental critics, such as Probe International, had noted that the bank did not conduct an environmental-impact assessment for the project, which included a 40-metre high dam and reservoir, irrigation canals, roads, new towns, and the “moving out” of the native herdsmen. with files by Associated Press