China's Campaign Against Tibetan Children

China’s Campaign Against Tibetan Children

Khedroob Thondup argues that the Chinese state is waging a deliberate campaign to erase Tibetan identity, and that its main target is Tibetan children. Language policy, a vast boarding school system and ideological education are used, he writes, to separate children from their language, their Buddhist faith and their families.

He points to the more than one million Tibetan children in state-run boarding schools, where Mandarin dominates and Tibetan is reduced to a secondary subject, to textbooks that cast the Dalai Lama as a separatist, to military-style drills in primary schools, and to reported punishments for praying or wearing blessing cords. He compares the system to the residential schools imposed on Indigenous children in North America.

Thondup argues that these policies breach the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He calls on governments to condemn the boarding schools and to fund Tibetan-language schools and digital archives in exile, urges universities, NGOs and journalists to document what is happening, and concludes that Tibetan resilience will outlast the campaign.

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