To 

President Xi Jinping, 

People’s Republic of China

Under your leadership, China endorsed ‘second-generation ethnic policy’, aiming to make all national, linguistics, and religion a mere subservient to the Han majority. Under this scheme, China intends to marginalize the Tibetan language by promoting ‘Putonghua’. Over the years, we have witnessed a series of torture, detention, and imprisonment of Tibetans advocating for the promotion of Tibetan language and education.

In particular, I am writing to voice my serious concern over the Chinese government’s coercive practice of the colonial boarding school system in Tibet, nearly one million Tibetan children, as young as 4 years old, are forced to be separated from their parents and barred off any access to their culture, language and religion. These children are also subjected to psychological, physical and sexual abuses as evident from first-hand accounts and testimonies by colonial boarding school survivors. 

I would like to echo the concerns expressed by the Central Tibetan Administration and Tibetan rights groups over the Chinese government’s systematic eradication of Tibetan culture, identity and language including removal of Tibetan as a medium of teaching instruction in schools; forcible closure of local Tibetan schools; curtailment of any informal voluntary setting to teach Tibetan language and culture. Therefore, I demand the rights of Tibetans to preserve and promote Tibetan language and call for the immediate shut down of China’s colonial schools in Tibet that threaten the safety and protection of the Tibetan children.

I also reiterate the recent concerns raised by four UN Special Rapporteurs with mandates on Minority Issues, Cultural Rights, the Right to Education, and Freedom of Religion or Belief, in a joint communication to the Chinese government over China’s assimilationist policies that threaten the existence of Tibet’s language, culture and religion.

As we observe the International Day of Education on 24 January and the International Mother Tongue Day on 21 February, I would like to call upon the Government of People’s Republic of China to:

• Stop the forcible enrolment of Tibetan children in China’s colonial boarding schools in Tibet and the immediate shut down of such schools;
• Respect the rights of the Tibetan children;
• Respect and uphold the rights guaranteed in the PRC constitution and internal legal instruments;
• Ensure a high-quality education in their mother tongue Tibetan language;
• Allow independent experts access to these colonial boarding schools and Chinese government schools to inspect the conditions of Tibetan children;
• Stop coercive policies targeting Tibetan children for political indoctrination and cultural assimilation; and
• Ensure sound and healthy development of Tibetan children with access to their own language, culture and religion.