Below is an article written by UNPO:

19 September 2008, Tallinn – Experts from the Baltic States and Tibet, meeting at the Estonian Academy of Sciences, have issued an important declaration that calls for a high-level conference that will examine the long neglected issue of population transfer.  It is intended that the conference will assess what steps can be taken to counter the effects of population transfer.  The declaration also made an urgent call for the immediate cessation of population transfer being implemented by the Chinese authorities in East Turkestan, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet.

Recalling the debates that arose from the 1992 UNPO Conference on Population Transfer and the reports of successive United Nations’ Special Rapporteurs, the seminar, ‘Population Transfer: The Baltic States and the Tibetan Experience’ drew on UNPO’s historic relationship with Estonia, which was a founding member of UNPO until the country’s accession to United Nations membership in 1991, to bring academics and former dissidents together to provide an Estonian perspective on population transfer and its mitigation.

The commonality of the problems faced by both peoples sadly reflected the lack of progress that has been made in countering population transfer.  This has driven the need to fix renewed international attention on the issue since despite the unquestionably grave repercussions of population transfer, there is no international legal mechanism that can be used to comprehensively identify, protect, and censure actors perpetrating population transfer. 

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has identified population transfer as a specific crime, but there has been a failure to adequately define population transfer in a manner which makes it.  The declaration therefore called for an investigation to be held in 2009 into the contemporary effects of population transfer, the legal safeguards which could be developed to protect the heritage, rights, and livelihoods of people. 

Despite its innocuousness and deceptive simplicity as a term, ‘population transfer’ is a phenomenon that cannot fully communicate the very real and damaging effects for the cultural, linguistic, and religious identities of those people it affects.   It has been extensively used by governments to marginalize groups within state boundaries, and since 1992 has continued to be a potent tool for demographic manipulation. 

Frequently involving a complex interrelation of settler implantation and state sponsored or coercive emigration of ethnic minorities from their homelands, population transfer has historically been used to consolidate centralized state power.  Because population transfer is practiced principally within the borders of states, and that these states are led by regimes with questionable democratic credentials, the opportunities for international leverage.

The texts of the participants’ speeches can be obtained by following the links below:

Introductory Remarks

                                         Mr. Aleksei Lotman MP, Chairman, Riigikogu Tibet Support Group

Closing Remarks 

Mr. Aleksei Lotman MP, Chairman, Riigikogu Tibet Support Group

The Tallinn Declaration on Population Transfer:

The seminar notes with keen interest the experience of the Baltic States, and in particular Estonia, in meeting the challenges of population transfer both during, and subsequent to, their Soviet occupation.

Comparing the experiences of the Baltic States to the current situation in Chinese-occupied Tibet, the seminar recognized many commonalities in the threats to cultural, traditional, religious and national identity faced by the Baltic States and, today in Tibet respectively. 

The seminar welcomed the contributions made by participants as well as members of the UNPO Presidency, which have broadened the discussion of population transfer while recommending the need for a comprehensive global assessment of the impact resulting from population transfer and implantation of settlers.

In expressing its alarm at the lack of any serious international attention being given to the subject of population transfer in Tibet, Eastern Turkestan and Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in the world, the seminar decided to convene an international conference to examine the contemporary forms of population transfer, their different impacts on humanity as a whole and the need for stronger international safeguards to counter it.

The proposed international conference should be convened in 2009, tasked with bringing together legal and expert opinions, testimonies from peoples threatened by population transfer as well as policy makers, with the objective of including the launch of a global campaign to counter population transfer and its manifestations.

The seminar expressed deep concerns about the threats to the survival of the Tibetan people as result of China’s policies, including that of population transfer into the Tibetan Plateau. Participants fully shared the opinion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama that a form of “cultural genocide” is taking place in Tibet.

The seminar called upon the international community to urge the Chinese authorities to immediately halt the influx of Chinese settlers into Tibet and recommends to the European Union that this matter is raised as a priority in the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue.

Note:

The declaration can be downloaded by clicking here. (PDF format, 76kb)

The seminar press release can be downloaded by clicking here. (PDF format, 208kb)

The seminar programme can be downloaded by clicking here. (PDF format, 176kb)