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Antony Blinken criticises China’s state boarding schools that ‘seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions’
France Media Agency
Wed 23 Aug 2023 04.31 BST
The United States will impose visa sanctions on Chinese officials pursuing “forced assimilation” of children in Tibet, where UN experts say one million children have been separated from their families.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken said the US would restrict visas to Chinese officials behind the policy of state boarding schools, in the latest in a series of US moves on Beijing that comes despite a resumption of high-level dialogue.
“These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Blinken said in a statement.
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“We urge PRC [People’s Republic of China] authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
A state department spokesperson said the new restrictions would apply to current and former officials involved in education policy in Tibet but did not give further details, citing US confidentiality laws on visa records.
The US separately imposed sanctions in December on two top-ranking Chinese officials, Wu Yingjie and Zhang Hongbo, over what Washington said were widespread human rights violations in Tibet.
Blinken in his statement cited a figure given in February by three UN experts who said that around one million Tibetan children have been forcibly removed into boarding schools.
The program appears aimed at unwillingly integrating Tibetans into China’s majority Han culture, with compulsory education in Mandarin and no instruction culturally relevant to the Buddhist-majority Himalayan region, the special rapporteurs said.
This week the Tibetan human rights group, Tibet Watch, said language advocate Tashi Wangchuk had been attacked in a hotel. Last week Tashi had travelled to eastern Tibet to raise awareness about the disappearance of Tibetan language in schools. On Saturday evening he posted a video to social media platform Douyin. According to the group a short time later a group of masked men forced their way into his hotel room and beat him. The police were called and Tashi was taken in for questioning and ordered to delete his photos and videos, the group said.
In 2018 Tashi was sentenced to five year’s jail, accused of inciting separatism with his campaign to teach the Tibetan language in local schools. He continued to advocate upon his early release in 2021
A separate report this year from UN experts said that hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have also been forced out of traditional rural life into low-skill “vocational training” as a pretext to undermine their identity.
The Chinese foreign ministry called the report “completely unfounded” and said the Tibet region “enjoys social stability, economic development, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and people live and work in peace.”
The International Campaign for Tibet, a pressure group close to the region’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, applauded Blinken’s action against the “unconscionable” separation of children.
“As the Dalai Lama often says, Tibetan culture, based on peace and compassion, has value to offer to the entire world,” said the group’s president, Tencho Gyatso.
“This boarding school program targets the most vulnerable and impressionable minds and is aimed at converting Tibetans into Chinese, cementing the Chinese government’s control over Tibet and annihilating the Tibetan culture and way of life,” she said.
Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China. Beijing claims says it “peacefully liberated” the region in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region.
The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959, has won a global following through his spiritual teachings, while raising awareness about Tibet.
At 88 the monk has now slowed his travels and said he may break Buddhist tradition and pick his own reincarnation or declare the institution over, fearing officially atheist Beijing will identify and groom a pliant successor.
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