US company halts DNA collection kit sales in Tibetan region

INTERNATIONAL DESK: In a victory for Tibet activists, biotechnology firm Thermo Fisher Scientific says it has stopped selling kits reportedly used for mass DNA collection in a region of Chinese-occupied Tibet.

“Based on a number of factors we made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of [human identification] products in the region and no longer sell our human identification technology in the Tibet Autonomous Region,” a spokesperson for the Boston-based company told Axios.

According to reports, China’s police collected DNA from about 1 million residents of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which spans roughly half of Tibet. China has illegally occupied Tibet for 65 years, turning it into the least-free country on Earth alongside South Sudan and Syria, according to the watchdog group Freedom House.

Thermo Fisher’s statement that it has stopped selling its DNA collection kits in the TAR follows a year of heavy campaigning by Tibet activists, including the groups Students for a Free Tibet, Free Tibet and the International Tibet Network.

The International Tibet Network said today that Thermo-Fisher sent a letter to shareholders last month stating that it would halt all direct and indirect sales of human identification products to Tibet. (CTA)