China denies Tibet railway hurting Tibetans

By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's railway to Tibet has strengthened government control in the remote region and led to policies that marginalize ethnic Tibetans, a U.S.-based advocacy group said on Thursday.

Nearly two years after the world's highest railroad was completed at a cost of $1.4 billion, the International Campaign for Tibet said it was accelerating an influx of Han Chinese into the region and threatening its fragile high-altitude environment.

"Only a re-orientation of economic strategy towards local integration -- in effect 'Tibetanizing' development -- .... could reverse the trend of marginalization and estrangement," the group said in its report, "Tracking the Steel Dragon."

Such marginalization was undermining the efforts of China's ruling Communist Party to maintain stability in the region its troops invaded in 1950, the report said.

China's Foreign Ministry dismissed the key claims of the report and praised the Qinghai-Tibet railway for improving exchanges.

"We believe the Qinghai-Tibet railway has played a positive role in promoting Tibet's economic and social development," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference, adding it had proved a "huge benefit."

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising and has since lived in exile in India.

But with Beijing hosting the Olympics in August, the status of Tibet has joined the list of issues that activists say China must address, such as human rights and its policies towards Sudan and Myanmar. The Dalai Lama has said Tibet supporters should protest peacefully against Chinese rule during the Games.