Yes, Tibet was the first case. When Tibet was occupied and human rights violations took place, many people, many leaders, thought they could keep quiet in Tibet and make deals with the Chinese government. Later they realized that what happened in Tibet was now happening in Xinjiang, with almost a million in detention. You know, the party secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region was sent to Xinjiang to implement what he did in Tibet. The architect of the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang is the same.
Similarly, yes, the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act was passed by Congress. It essentially says that for scholars, journalists or diplomats.... A lot of tourists, even, come from China to America, and from Tibet, so.... But Chinese embassies and consulates don't give visas for Canadian researchers, Canadian students, even Canadian tourists and Canadian diplomats to go to Tibet. This reciprocal access act simply says, look, if you want to come to Canada, we welcome you, but you must give similar access to Canadians to go to Tibet. If you don't do that, this is a basic violation of human rights.
As well, if there are Chinese officials who violate human rights, who torture Tibetans, who act with impunity, and who think they can get away with it because no one will talk about it, then the American government is saying they will deny their visa to come to America. They have named some officials of East Turkistan who have violated the human rights of Uighur people.
That's what we are saying: Similar things should happen. For example, 2018 was a year of tourism between Canada and China. How many Chinese came to Canada? But how many Tibetans came from Tibet to Canada? It was almost zero, because not even 1% of Tibetans in Tibet are allowed to have a passport. Even those few thousand with passports who went to India for pilgrimages had their passports confiscated when they returned to Tibet. One Tibetan blogger wrote that Tibetans have a better chance of going to heaven than getting a passport from the Chinese government.
The reciprocal access act simply says, yes, Canadians should be allowed to go to Tibet. Similarly, Tibetans should be allowed to come to Canada, and researchers especially. Freedom House says that Syria is the least free region in the whole world. The second least free region in the whole world is Tibet. How many people know about that? Not many, because journalists are not allowed to go to Tibet to investigate the situation.
That's why 50 UN independent experts and 30 UN special procedure mandate holders have written to the Chinese government: Allow them to go to Hong Kong; give them access to Tibet; they want to do research. But the Chinese government says no. Even visas are used to blackmail scholars to write their research papers favourable to the Chinese government and unfavourable to the Canadian government and Tibet.