The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) and Asian Dignity Initiative (ADI) have released a joint report, Sucked Our Marrow: Tibetan Language and Education Rights under Xi Jinping, which demonstrates the devastating consequences for education and language rights experienced in Tibet. The report details Xi Jinping’s governments’ policies of deliberately targeting children and young people in their drive to annihilate the Tibetan culture in breach of fundamental human rights and their own constitution.
“Children and young people have become primary targets in Xi Jinping’s campaign to build a ‘modern’ education system in which Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese based on the Beijing dialect) enjoys a higher status and power than minority languages, violating constitutional guarantees for regional autonomy and the principle of equality and non-discrimination”, said the report.
Tibetan monastic institutions are also being forced to teach in Putonghua.
Citing the examples of the closing down of the private educational institutions that promote the Tibetan language and culture in Tibet, including those previously approved by the state, the Dharamshala based rights group expressed “concern over the speed at which the private schools are being closed and Putonghua national curriculum imposed as it amounts to an attack on the cultural ecosystem that serves as the last bastion of Tibetan cultural heritage in the seven decades of Chinese occupation”.
TCHRD have released a press statement to launch their report saying, “The right to education is recognised as a fundamental human right indispensable for realising other human rights. […] it is increasingly evident that Chinese laws and policies cannot protect the right to use minority languages because they are part of a broader nation-building strategy geared towards creating a zhonghua minzu (Chinese National) identity with a single language and identification with the Chinese nation-state”.
The report stated that China is aggressively pursuing the concept of “Chinese National”, introduced into the Chinese Constitution in 2018 as a tool to forcibly assimilate minority nationalities into the larger Han Chinese population of 1.2 billon.
TCHRD urges the international community to request a visit to Tibet by UN human rights experts on education and language rights, to enable them to make an assessment of the quality and availability of Tibetan language teaching and its use within Tibet, and to call on the China to issue a standing invitation to UN independent experts to conduct official visits in Tibet and other parts of the Peoples Republic of China.
“China must guarantee the right to self-determination and create concrete conditions to enable Tibetans to exercise genuine autonomy as provided for in the PRC’s Constitution and Law on Regional National Autonomy,” said TCHRD.
TCHRD is a non-government Tibetan human rights organisation who monitors, documents and conducts research on the human rights situation in Tibet, and provides that information to the international community. Their partner on this report, the Asian Dignity Initiative (ADI), is a non-government organisation from the Republic of Korea dedicated to defending the human rights of marginalised people in Asia.
The full report can be read here
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