By Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, March 29: The executive head of the CTA, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, Chair of the International Campaign for Tibet Richard Gere, Director of Tibet Action Institute Lhadon Tethong and Senior Researcher and Strategist for Tibet Action Institute Tenzin Dorjee on Tuesday testified at a hearing of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC). The hearing titled, “Preserving Tibet: Combating Cultural Erasure, Forced Assimilation and Transnational Repression,” was chaired by Representative Christopher H. Smith and co-chaired by Jeff Berkley.
Sikyong Penpa Tsering, the exiled Tibetan leader testified virtually from Dharamshala, India on Tibet’s worsening challenges under the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive rule and its threat to linguistic, religious, and cultural heritage. “If PRC is not made to reverse or change its current policies, Tibet and Tibetans will definitely die a slow death,” he said.
“China intends to destroy everything that makes Tibetans Tibetan,” said Lhadon Tethong on the Communist Party’s program of forced assimilation of ethnic and religious minority groups where now an estimated 80 percent of all children in the so called Tibet Autonomous Region are separated from their families and educated in a massive system of colonial boarding schools.
“The Tibetan culture was an experiment of extraordinary visionary possibilities,” Richard Gere remarked while stressing the need to protect the ability of Tibetans living under Chinese rule to pass their culture down from one generation to the next. Gere also expressed his sadness over the ongoing destruction of Tibetan culture and said, “this is breaking the continuity of love and compassion and wisdom.”
Tenzin Dorjee spoke on CCP’s transnational repression, targeting Tibetan diaspora communities in India, Nepal, Europe, and North America for surveillance and harassment. “The best way to counter China’s transnational repression is to proactively support the Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong people’s transnational decolonize advocacy and strengthen the Chinese people’s longstanding struggle for democracy and freedom,” he remarked.
The CECC is an independent agency of the US government that monitors human rights and the rule of law developments in China and has recently condemned and questioned the Massachusetts-based company Thermo Fisher’s President and its CEO over their equipment sale to Chinese police for illegal mass DNA collection from Tibetans.
Tibetans are not the only minority group targeted in the region. Perhaps it makes sense to speak as underrepresented groups rather than one focal minority that has been in the limelight for the better part of a century (1959 is many generations ago). In a numbers game, the more voices the less tone deaf is the international community, especially when there is no evident economic gain for involvement.