New Delhi: 200 students have been taken away from a Tibetan school and force-enrolled in a state-controlled residential school for their education and ‘proper’ upbringing.
Earlier this month, the parents of about 200 Tibetan children in the age group 15 to 18 years were in for a shock when they were forced by the Chinese authorities of Sichuan province to enroll and send their wards to the state-controlled residential school for their education and “proper” upbringing. These children belonged to the local Lhamo Kirti Monastery School, which was founded as a community initiative by the monastery in 1993 to part education in Tibetan language and Tibetan culture but was forcibly closed by the Chinese authorities in July this year. Soon after the closure, a batch of about 300 Tibetan children belonging to the 6-14 age group was taken away and admitted in a newly opened residential school despite strong resistance from their families.
The new school, run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is among hundreds of similar residential schools that have been established across Tibet by the Chinese government to implement President Xi’s diktat to ensure a “united” and “homogenous” society with “Chinese socialist characters”. These schools are dreaded by Tibetan parents because Tibetan children are not only weaned away from their Tibetan environment but are made to grow up in a typical Han Chinese environment in which they can communicate only in the Chinese language and are brainwashed with the Communist ideology.
On February 6, 2023, a study by a group of UN experts had warned that around a million Tibetan children were being affected by Chinese government policies aimed at assimilating Tibetan people culturally, religiously, linguistically and ideologically through the residential school system. This Chinese move has already attracted strong opposition and condemnation in the parliaments of Germany, Canada and the European Parliament whereas the US government has placed restrictions of all such Chinese officials and CCP leaders who are engaged in these Tibetan residential schools.
President Xi’s campaign of brainwashing and “homogenizing” the entire Tibetan generation through CCP-run residential schools has grown out of his frustration that despite CCP’s seven-decade long colonial rule over Tibet and total absence of exiled Dalai Lama’s influence, the Tibetan resistance against Chinese rule has refused to die. The worst shock for Xi has been that since his taking over the reins of China as its “Paramount Leader”, more than 157 Tibetan monks, nuns and ordinary youths have committed self-immolation demanding freedom for Tibet and return of Dalai Lama.
In early 2023, the Xi government’s campaign of collecting blood samples of each Tibetan citizen and their DNA profiling raised a huge controversy and protests at international levels. The main concern of human rights organizations and experts was that China was building a scientific medical data bank of Tibetans to support its ongoing illegal trade in human organs. It was also feared that the Chinese army can use this data for forcible blood donations in the event of a war. America’s Thermo Fisher Scientific Company had to face a massive opposition from international organizations for supplying its biomedical products and instruments to the Chinese government in this unethical campaign.
President Xi’s frustration against his Tibetan colonial subjects has frequently found expression in many other aggressive acts like implementing stricter ban on keeping the present Dalai Lama’s photos; disciplinary proceedings against all such Tibetan officials and CCP cadres who are found participating in community religious celebrations or family prayers; demolition of all such Buddhist statues in every town or village where the statue dominates the skyline or is visible from a distance; closing and demolishing all community run Tibetan schools; and wiping out all such Buddhist community establishments which have evolved without official plans.
For example, following the typical Taliban style of demolishing historic Buddhist statues at Bamian in Afghanistan, Xi’s government demolished two massive statues of Buddha, one being 99 feet high, in the Kham region of original Tibet, now a part of the Sichuan province of China. Similarly, a massive Buddhist community, which was slowly developed by thousands of Tibetan and Han Chinese practitioners in Larung Gar in the Larung Valley of Sertar County in Sichuan, was completely pulled down and wiped out under the personal supervision of Wong Dongshen, a prominent CCP leader on the pretext of “environment protection”. Interestingly Wong was also responsible for demolishing above mentioned Buddha statues.
