BEIJING – Chinese officials face fresh visa restrictions imposed by the United States on suspicion of activities in the Tibet region.
The US has imposed curbs specifically for the alleged involvement of officials in the “forced assimilation” of over 1 million children in state-run boarding schools in Tibet.
In this regard, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not reveal the identities of those who face curbs but urged Beijing to end its “coercive” policies in the region.
“These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Blinken said in a statement.
“We urge PRC 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,” he said while referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The US is not the only force pushing China to revisit its policy as in February, a group of United Nations experts expressed concerns that the residential schools system appeared to ‘act as a mandatory large-scale programme’ intended to assimilate Tibetans into dominant Han culture.
The experts alleged that the system was expanding as rural schools were shut and aroud 1 million children had now been separated from their families to attend the institutions where they were compelled to complete a compulsory education curriculum in the Mandarin Chinese language, without a comprehensive study of the Tibetan language, history, and culture.
“As a result, Tibetan children are 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,” they said in a statement.
The latest visa restrictions come on the heels of broken ties between the two countries over a range of issues mainly related to trade, the COVID-19 pandemic, the treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighurs, and the situation in Taiwan.
On the other hand, the Chinese authorities dismissed the latest visa curbs as “smears” that “seriously undermine China-US relations”.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, told newsmen that the schools were built to cater to the needs of the local population.
“Boarding schools have gradually developed into one of the important modes of running schools in China’s ethnic minority areas, and the centralised way of running schools effectively solves the problem of ethnic minority students’ difficulty in attending school at a distance where the local people live scattered,” he said.
Moreover, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a news briefing that the country opposed the curbs.
“This wrong decision should be revoked immediately, otherwise China will make a resolute and forceful response,” Wang said.
The US has been raising voice for the people in Tibet and even appointed veteran diplomat Uzra Zeya as Tibet coordinator last year to “promote substantive dialogue” between China and the Dalai Lama and to protect the human rights of the Tibetan people.
