The Canada Tibet Committee works on a variety of issues affecting Tibet that encompass two overall campaigns: Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Rights.

 

Each of our campaigns offers at least one opportunity for you to take a personal action and be involved.

 

 

The Canada Tibet Committee (CTC) is challenging Canadian businesses to take the lead in the protection of human rights when they do business in China.

 

Through its new "When Do You Draw the Line" campaign, the CTC intends to identify and publish on its website those Canadian companies that abide by and enforce international human rights, labour and environmental standards, and those that do not.

 

The CTC urges Canadian companies doing business in China to adopt the ten principles of the UN's Global Compact, and to include an independent enforcement mechanism under Canadian jurisdiction that would apply to all of a company's operations, including those in China.

 

 

 

The exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources has been a concern to Tibetans for many years. The opening of the Gormo-Lhasa railway in 2006 and rapid growth in the number of mining operations in recent years has intensified these concerns.

 

Tibet has 126 known minerals, including rich deposits of chromium, copper, iron and boron. In 2007, China's top geologist confirmed that vast deposits of copper, iron, lead and zinc had been found along the route of the newly opened railway, indicating that a primary purpose of the railway is to open up Tibet's mineral wealth for rapid extraction.

 

One copper deposit in Qulong, Tibet, has a proven reserve of 7.89 million tons, making it the second largest copper find in China and Tibet. The Government of China has also acknowledged that mining is now one of Lhasa's “pillar industries”.

 

 

 

Invaded by China in 1950, Tibet has suffered the loss of life, freedoms, and human rights under communist Chinese domination. In March 1959, an uprising against China’s occupation in Tibet was crushed and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader and head of state, was forced to escape into exile in India, followed by 80,000 Tibetans.

 

In the first twenty-five years of the occupation, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans died in military clashes, in labour camps, and by execution and starvation. Some 6,000 religious sites were destroyed, and Tibet’s cultural, political, and social institutions were pulled apart.