China Shuts Down Award-Winning Tibetan School Amid Sinicization Efforts

By Tsering Choephel

DHARAMSALA, 15 July: The Chinese Communist Government on 12 July shut down the renowned Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational High School in Golok, in the traditional Tibetan Province of Amdo, while on the same day, US President Joe Biden signed the historic Tibet Resolve Act into US law. In a video circulating online of the closing ceremony held at the school, teachers and pupils, both lay and ordained, can be seen crying and grieving over the forced closure of their school.

According to a report on tibet.net, the official webpage of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) on Sunday, the closure of the school, also known as Gang Jong Sherig Norbu Lobling, established in 1994 by monk Jigme Gyaltsen and run by the Snow Land Academy of Sciences, “follows several similar closures of Tibetan private schools in recent years aimed at terminating the preservation of Tibetan language and identity, including culture and religion. Several lawsuits and pressures from the Golok area’s Communist Party Secretary and other officials have conspired to close this school for many years.”

In line with China’s regular practice of making trumped-up charges against any Tibetan working for the preservation of Tibetan identity amid Beijing’s relentless sinicizing efforts, Jigme Gyaltsen, as per the report, “has been wrongly accused of accepting bribes under the guise of being the chairman of the Snow Land Pastoral Association and the Qinghai-Tibet Trade Association.” Though he was found not guilty of the alleged crimes, the school closure couldn’t be stopped.

Citing unnamed sources, the report says that the Chinese provincial government of Qinghai, as a guise for its true intent of forcing the closure of the school, stated that “search and interrogation were conducted to determine if there were any monks or nuns under 18 and threatened severe punishment if they were found.”

Jigme Gyaltsen, whose initiatives through founding the school and Snowland Treasure Co., Ltd boast “at least 2259 graduate students,” with hundreds of them working in various sectors as researchers, government officials, teachers, entrepreneurs, among others, expressed his final message in an online post dated 14 July.

Grieving the end of the three-decade-old school, Jigme wrote, “What is impermanent is never permanent. It is the inevitable law of impermanence that things change from moment to moment. We believe in rebirth and that education through a series of lives is the most important thing. Why not pray for education in future lives? If death cannot be revived, what is the use of wailing? Therefore, it is best to pray for a perfect body in future lives. Please do not be sad, but take responsibility for your future.”

Chinese authorities enforced the closure of the school despite its widespread respect and receipt of many awards and accolades for its contributions and outstanding works. Alumni of the school have reportedly published over 300 books and written articles on literature, art, grammar, folklore, costume, and mountain and river cultures, contributing to the development of cultural education. The “Golden Award for Educational Hope” was awarded to the Sherab Norbu Ling institution, with many researchers from major universities in China as well as Australia paying visits to the institution to study and learn its educational methods. The National People’s Political Consultative Conference awarded Jigme Gyaltsen the “Zhongua Charity Worker” title. In addition, he received the “National People’s Education Award” and the “National People’s Education School Award” and was recognized as one of the “Four Famous Educators,” the report added.

With Xi Jinping’s escalating campaign of sinicization of Tibetan cultures and identity to solidify Beijing’s grip and control of occupied Tibet, the closure of the Gang Jong Sherig Norbu Lobling school occurs, it seems, because of its successes in works toward the preservation of Tibetan language, cultures, and identity while empowering Tibetan youth to become self-reliant and contributing members of the Tibetan community at large.

In Jigme Gyaltsen’s “A Few Proposed Suggestions on Education” presentation speech given at the annual political consultative conference held in Xining in January 2014 and its English translation published in highpeakspureearth.com, he outlined in detail his observations on the problems with education in Tibet. In nine concise points, he addressed a range of issues, including the practicality and necessity of the Tibetan language as a medium of teaching in Tibetan schools, the scarcity and quality of teachers, the need for equal treatment to bridge the gap between policy and implementation on the ground, the distortion of meanings and context, and its danger to social harmony, among others.

Speaking about the appointment of Chinese officials to high positions in monastery management, he said, “Not only are they lacking in the ability to take care of the monastery, but in a few monasteries, high officials appointed to the commission and the monastery itself are in antagonistic relations. The main reason is that not only do they not know about Buddhism, they don’t know about Tibetan culture and local traditions and customs. So lacking the ability to deeply educate the monks, in some places, the government and the monastery have become at odds with each other, which has become an obstacle to unity.”

In his last point, Jigme Gyaltsen called on the Provincial People’s Representative Assembly to investigate the procedures of TAR’s many regulations that he said are “hardly put into practice” and cited the lack of rights for many Tibetans “to submit letters of request and letters of charge in Tibetan,” among others.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise, though a huge blow to Tibetans, that Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen and his Sherab Norbu Ling school have been targets of Chinese authorities for years, with the tragic end of forced closure on 12 July.

Coincidentally, on 12 July, the long-awaited Tibet Resolve Act became law after Biden signed it. The bill, which was widely discussed and celebrated as a victory for months, upon being signed into law, garnered much celebration and discussion among the Tibetan diaspora.

While details of the bill, now law in the US, certainly mark a victory for Tibetans’ freedom struggle, the closing remarks of Biden’s statement, which said that “the Act does not change longstanding bipartisan United States policy to recognize the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas of China as part of the People’s Republic of China,” along with the news of the closure of Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational High School in Golok, remind us that it’s still a long, long way to freedom in Tibet.