By Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, Feb. 7: Three United Nations experts have expressed alarm at China’s residential school policies in occupied Tibet, which separated nearly one million Tibetan children from their families. In the latest joint statement sent to China, the experts have stated that they are ‘disturbed’ and ‘alarmed’ by the forced assimilation of Tibetan children by the Chinese government at residential schools in occupied Tibet.
The three independent experts Fernand de Varennes, UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the right to education and Alexandra Xanthaki, Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said the Special Rapporteur is part of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council to monitor as well as report thematic issues or situations of any specific country.
The experts expressed their concern for nearly one million Tibetan children who were forcibly separated from their families and are being affected by Chinese government policies aimed at assimilating innocent Tibetans culturally, religiously and linguistically through the repressive residential school system. The experts also highlighted that the colonial boarding school’s environment intended to assimilate Tibetan children into the predominant Han culture, by forcing them to study only Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) and denying access to study Tibetan language, history and culture.
“We are very disturbed that in recent years the residential school system for Tibetan children appears to act as a mandatory large-scale program intended to assimilate Tibetans into Majority Han culture, contrary to international human rights standards.
“As a result, Tibetan children are losing their facility with their native language and the ability to communicate easily with their parents and grandparents in the Tibetan language, which contributes to their assimilation and erosion of their identity,” the experts stated.
CTA’s Representative Thinlay Chukki at its defacto embassy in Geneva stated, “this is one of the first press releases by the UN experts on Tibet, detailing the egregious human rights violations in Tibet, and we hope many will follow especially given the dire situation in Tibet, which remains the least free regions in the world. As noted by the experts, even though there are many residential schools in other parts of China, their numbers are much higher in Tibet. This points to the concerted and systematic efforts of China to destroy Tibetan language, culture and religion.”
