Chinese officials face visa sanctions for ’forced assimilation” policy in Tibet
By Tsering Choephel
DHARAMSALA, 24th Aug: The US on Tuesday announced that it will impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials involved in CCP’s “forced assimilation” policy, where over a million Tibetan children have been put into government-run boarding schools.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a press conference, has condemned the Beijings’ coercive policies that “seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,”
Blinken urged the Chinese authorities “to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC. We will continue to work with our allies and partners to highlight these actions and promote accountability.”
The UN experts, in their February report finding, warned of the threat of CCP’s “mandatory large-scale programme intended to assimilate Tibetans into the majority Han culture” to the Tibetans’ distinct linguistic and cultural heritage.
The UN report found that the domination of Han culture content and environment in these residential schools with a limited curriculum of Tibetan language, history and culture is resulting in Tibetan children “losing their facility with their native language and the ability to communicate easily with their parents and grandparents in the Tibetan language, which contributes to their assimilation and erosion of their identity.”
The US has in the past also imposed visa sanctions on Chinese officials who are complicit in the CCP’s repression of Uyghurs of East Turkistan as well as dissidents and activists in China or in the US.
Beijing – in response to the US’s latest visa sanction in opposition to China’s assimilative policies being carried out in occupied Tibet – dismissed the allegations as “smears” that “seriously undermine China-US relations”, reported Aljazeera yesterday.
