China’s Colonial Boarding Schools In Tibet Under UN Scrutiny
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In January next year, the United Nations will hold its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) where it will scrutinise the human rights conduct of its member states, assess their claims on upholding human rights and also invite NGOs and other stakeholders to give their views on the country in question.   It could be a particularly uncomfortable […]

The colonial boarding schools in Tibet will have enormous psychological impact and emotional trauma on Tibetan children, has implications for whole generations of Tibetans and the long-term survival of the Tibetan identity, a new report grimly predicts.

It makes the following points:

  • Tibet’s education system has become primarily residential according to official Chinese data, and approximately 800,000 Tibetan students aged 6-18 (78%) are living in such schools;

  • Tibetan parents are compelled to send their children to such schools for lack of alternatives, and also due to threats and intimidation from the authorities;

  • Students are at risk of losing their mother tongue since classes are primarily in Chinese, they live apart from their communities, are unable to practice their religion and are subjected to a highly politicized curriculum to make them identify as Chinese;

  • Tibetan students speak of physical and sexual abuse in the boarding schools, long hours designed to exhaust and make children succumb and break them from their parents.

The hope is international pressure generated could force China to clean up its act and Tibetan activists say there is some evidence of that. But in the end Beijing’s gestures may only be cosmetic. The overall intent and goal of its Tibet policy is clear and can be summed up in two words: Sinicization and assimilation.