Dharamsala, November 26: Principals of at least two Tibetan high schools and their deputies had been sacked from their jobs, and two other teachers have been fired following small-scale language protests over the weekend by students in Machu (Chinese: Maqu) County of Gansu Province, Radio Free Asia said in a report on Wednesday.
Chinese authorities in the region blocked student demands to use Tibetan language in their schools and stepped up surveillance of Tibetan high schools following the protest, which took place on November 14, the report said, citing exiled sources as saying.
“There is very tight surveillance in the classrooms,” Gonpo, a researcher at the Norbulingka Institute in Dharamsala with sources in Machu, told RFA.
“The principals of the schools have been fired, along with two teachers.”
The two principals had been transferred to other departments within the education bureau, while their deputies had been transferred to other government departments, he said.
The report said the renewed protests by Tibetan high-school students had prompted tight security around local school and college campuses, and even in the classrooms.
Gonpo even said the parents of the students had been required to go to the Machu county center to hold meetings with local government leaders.
Following the protest, security forces were strengthened in the area, with vehicles positioned at intersections and in the main streets of the Machu county centre, the report said.
Local Tibetan sources told RFA earlier this week that a group of two or three students marched in protest to the Machu county center in the Kanlho [in Chinese, Gannan] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Gansu on Nov. 14, at around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m..
The students, believed to be from the Machu High School, walked for about a mile, carrying a white banner and shouting slogans calling for the independence of Tibet, the source said.
The students were later taken away by police, who arrived in three vehicles, the report cited the source as saying.
The report also said an employee at a local hotel confirmed an increased security presence in the county center.
“There are police on patrol here,” she said, but declined to give further details. “It’s hard for me to answer you,” she said.
Last month Tibetan students in the prefecture staged a wave of large-scale protests after the authorities announced plans to drop the Tibetan language as a medium of instruction in the schools.
Several hundred students and teachers from high schools in Chentsa [in Chinese, Jianzha] county, in Qinghai’s Malho [in Chinese, Huangnan] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, took to the streets on Oct. 24 in support of the continued use of Tibetan in local schools.
Exiled Tibetans have said the protests are a sign of long-running dissatisfaction over the suppression of Tibetan cultural and religious freedoms by Beijing.
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, has accused Beijing of perpetrating “cultural genocide” in Tibet.
Beijing has run a high-profile “patriotic education” campaign among Tibetans since widespread unrest against Chinese rule broke out across Tibet in 2008, requiring Tibetan people to denounce the Dalai Lama.
