As in previous years, the State Department’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Tibet confirms ongoing and serious human rights abuses against the Tibetan people, including disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest, and restrictions on religious freedom. Alarmingly, however, this report lacks the deep substance of past years.
The report, which was released on August 12, 2025, is more notable for what it does not include – and for underscoring the importance of Radio Free Asia (RFA) as one of the few media organizations able to report on human rights abuses in Tibet. The International Campaign for Tibet continues to urge the Trump Administration to reinstate funding for these critical organizations.
Reduced scope
The 2024 report is less than half the length of the 2023 report and omits numerous important sections. The 2023 version reports serious government corruption in Tibet under Chinese rule, while the word ‘corruption’ does not appear in the 2024 report. This is particularly regrettable given the June 2024 arrest of former Tibet Autonomous Region Party Secretary Wu Yingjie, who was convicted of embezzling 343 million Chinese yuan during his time in Tibet.
The section on political prisoners has been removed, and the previously robust sections on internet freedom, the right of assembly, and movement have been greatly reduced, among other issues.
Excluding these sections does not change the fact that Tibetan political prisoners continue to be imprisoned and mistreated and those with relative “freedom” continue to have their internet activity surveilled and their ability to assemble, move, and even speak heavily restricted.
Vital importance of RFA
The 2024 report repeatedly cites RFA, using it as a source for incidents including social media surveillance of Tibetans, the sentencing of activists, and the arrest of a monk.
RFA’s Tibetan service had a nearly 30-year history of serving two important functions: providing access to information inside Tibet that the Chinese government wants to restrict and shining a light on China’s egregious human rights abuses against Tibetans for the international community.
The credibility of RFA’s reporting is precisely the reason why the State Department has historically used it in their human rights reports, and the shuttering of RFA means that the State Department diplomats who prepare the 2025 report will have to do so without this unique and singular resource. Removing this critical source of information does not mean these human rights violations no longer occur, it simply provides China another layer of opacity to hide behind.
Value of human rights reports
China has effectively closed Tibet off to foreign journalists. The restrictions on reporting are so severe that some journalists have resorted to traveling there undercover in order to hear directly from Tibetans – as was the case for journalists working on the recent PBS documentary “Battle for Tibet.”
In such an environment, the existence of the State Department human rights report serves to endorse the credibility of widespread and persistent accusations of human rights abuses against the Tibetan people. The reports elevate facts which the Chinese government does not want the world to know.
A robust report therefore provides an overarching view of China’s machinery of repression, while a reduced report leaves much of this out of view. Less factual and comprehensive reporting creates more ability for China to explain away its abuses. As a result, ICT calls on the State Department to restore the prior and more comprehensive structure of the Human Rights Report to support US and international advocacy and accountability efforts for the Chinese government’s abuses.