Fueling dispute, Xi tells Tibet's herders to 'safeguard Chinese territory'

Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly told a Tibetan herding family to 'set down roots' in the disputed border area of southeastern Tibet, telling them to ‘safe guard the Chinese territory,’ using them in the dispute with India over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
 
Xi reportedly was responding to a letter written to him by two girls, Zhoigar and Yangzom, of a Tibetan herding family in Lhunze County of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region. Xi told the girls that they and other herding families should 'set down roots' in the border area,' continuing by saying that it is their responsibility to ‘safe guard the Chinese territory’ and ‘develop their township’.

The President also expressed his hope that other herders would follow suit and seek motivation to set roots in the border area and become ‘guardians of the Chinese territory’.

Lhunze County (Lhuntse Zong) is located in the southeastern part of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region and borders Arunachal Pradesh in India. China has been staking their territorial claim over the disputed region by calling it ‘Southern Tibet’ since 2006.

Introducing their township, the girls sent the letter to the President during the 19th CPC National Congress in Beijing.

Xi's comments on the importance of Tibetan nomadic families, and their responsibility of 'safeguarding borders' blatantly ignores Beijing’s abysmal record of forcible mass evictions of Tibetans nomads and herders from their ancestors’ grazing lands.

China’s intrusion of grassland policies over the years have threatened the sustainability of Tibet’s environmental balance and caused a serious concern over the socio economic life of Tibetan nomads.

Under China's rule, it's reported that over 300,000 nomadic herders have been removed from their ancestral land. Over two million Tibetans had been “rehoused” in Central Tibet, while hundreds of thousands of Tibetan herders in the eastern part of Tibet had been rehoused in 'New Socialist Villages.'

Tibet was invaded by Communist China in 1949. Since that time, over 1.2 million out of only 6 million total Tibetans have been killed, over 6000 monasteries have been destroyed, and acts of murder, rape, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment have been inflicted on the Tibetans inside Tibet. Beijing continues to call this a "peaceful liberation".