By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, April 12: Rights organization Tibet Watch on Monday said that the Chinese authorities in Tibet are targeting Tibetan parents to learn Chinese Mandarin as part of their sinicization campaign. “Tibetan parents, mostly nomads and farmers, whose mother tongue is Tibetan, are being forced to attend workshops and classes,” the group said adding that this tactic endangers the rights of Non-Han ethnicities living under the Chinese rule to practice their own local languages.
A source cited by the Dharamshala-based group said that from February to March this year, around 16 compulsory workshops for parents were held in a secondary school in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. However, the March 9 meeting aimed “not only to teach Chinese language but also reform [participants] thoughts through Chinese education.” The source further suggested that the workshops taught parents to teach Mandarin to their children “as part of their contribution to the ‘Chinese Dream’.”
The parents as agents of language promotion may not immediately seem like directly imposing a repressive policy, but said policies regarding children’s education have mostly been marred with ambiguous jargon including the concept of a bilingual policy, where only the mainstream Chinese language is prioritized. These compulsory workshops were also held in Nyima County in Tibet Autonomous Region, where according to a Chinese news article, authorities, local officials, Party members and local Tibetans held a meeting on learning national common language workshop and test.
“Those attending were told about Xi Jinping’s vision for China and were encouraged to spread everything that they had learned when they went back to their villages,” the report further added. The ministry of Education in China last year in June issued a notice where the state mandated compulsory usage of “national common language” from the fall that year. The Chinese government’s official motive of sinicizing the Tibetan culture has long been a constant threat to the Tibetan culture, including grim instances of closure of monastic schools last year that taught Tibetan language to their enrolled students.
