The United States is set to impose sanctions on Chinese officials behind the forced assimilation of Tibetan children in government-run boarding schools.
The move, announced by the State Department on Tuesday, follows claims by United Nations experts in February that a million children have been separated from their families.
“We urge PRC [People’s Republic of China] 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” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” he said in the statement, which did not name the officials involved.
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The programme appears to be aimed at integrating Tibetans into China’s majority Han culture, with compulsory education in Mandarin and no instruction culturally relevant to the Buddhist-majority Himalayan region, a report by AFP said, citing UN special rapporteurs said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry called the report “completely unfounded” and said the Tibet region “enjoys social stability, economic development, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and people live and work in peace”, it added.
However, Tibetan support groups in the West lauded Blinken’s statement.
Tibet has been ruled by China since 1951, when troops took control in what it says was a peaceful liberation.
China maintains that it protects the rights of all ethnic minority cultures and its constitution grants groups the freedom to use and develop their own written and spoken languages.
- Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard
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