Over 250,000 Sign Petition Urging UN Action on Tibet’s Colonial Boarding Schools

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 11 Feb: More than 2,50,000 people have signed a petition urging UN High Commissioner Volker Turk to break his silence on China’s colonial boarding schools in occupied Tibet, which aim to assimilate an entire generation of Tibetan children into the dominant Han culture, risking the permanent discontinuation of the generational transmission of distinct Tibetan language and culture.

The petition, along with a joint letter led by Tibet Advocacy Coalition and supported by International Tibet Network (ITN) member groups (over 140 global Tibet groups), will be delivered to the High Commissioner within weeks. This timing is crucial as it coincides with the upcoming 58th session of the Human Rights Council, scheduled from 24 February to 4 April 2025.

The alliance has specifically urged Turk “to issue a strong public statement of concern on Tibet with a request for access, including an independent monitoring visit to China’s colonial boarding schools for Tibetan children” in occupied Tibet.

Mandie McKeown, the Executive Director of International Tibet Network, has stated that “the UN High Commissioner has failed to take any meaningful action” during his two years in office and emphasized that he has remained silent “even though the situation has deteriorated alarmingly, not least with the evidence that around 1 million Tibetan children are forcibly separated from their families” in occupied Tibet.

According to an extensive report by the Tibet Action Institute in collaboration with Dr Gyalo, a Tibetan educationist and leading expert on China’s colonial boarding school system, over 900,000 Tibetan children as young as 4 are separated from their families and communities and forcibly enrolled in these colonial structures.

Furthermore, the children are forced to immerse themselves in the Chinese language, intentionally cutting them off from learning their mother tongue.

Additionally, the Chinese Communist Party has closed down private Tibetan language schools across occupied Tibet, with the forced closure of Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institute in July 2024 when clips of young Tibetan students crying on the last day of school surfaced online.

Earlier in 2023, Dr Gyalo, who has witnessed more than 50 Chinese boarding preschools, asserted in his address at the Geneva Summit that the entire system is “by design” with a specific agenda to destroy Tibet’s culture and identity.

He stated that academic materials must be approved by the Chinese government, and teachers are directed to strictly speak in Mandarin and teach according to the government’s mandate.

Over 100 Tibetan scholars unanimously issued a petition to the UN High Commissioner in August 2023 to call for an end to China’s forced assimilation policies, with a specific focus on the systemic closure of Tibetan monastic and public schools, which are seen by the Chinese government as alternatives for fostering the Tibetan language.

Major international news agencies like the BBC have reported on the issue through extensive investigation and have described education as “the latest battleground” in the larger framework of China’s colonial project over Tibet. More recently, The New York Times published a front-page article exposing China’s colonial boarding schools.

Under these circumstances, the petition to the UN High Commissioner carries significant weight at this crucial time, as he has the authority to draw international attention to Tibet’s human rights crisis during the upcoming Human Rights Council.

This is particularly vital given China’s ongoing efforts to assert its sovereignty over Tibet through various forms of systemic violence and epistemic injustice.