Tibet: Students return from winter break to fully Sinicized schools

Students in Tibet have returned from their winter break and are settling in a totally new school where the students are taught only in the Chinese language.

For years, China has been closing down the institutions that teach Tibetan language and culture, including monastery or private-run schools. Analysts and critics have slammed this Sinicization drive.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that teachers are also being given workshops on starting to teach children in the Chinese language.

All the subjects in the schools in Tibet's capital Lhasa were now being taught in Chinese, though most of the children feel more comfortable learning in their mother tongue, RFA reported citing sources.

They said Tibetans believed that the intention behind these changes is to brainwash the students. Likewise, all the school textbooks have been translated into Chinese in the Golog (in Chinese, Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of the north-western province of Qinghai.

Some of the translations were completed by the beginning of the last year. As a result, except for the Tibetan language class, all the subjects are now said to be taught in Chinese, the sources said.

Chinese authorities are suppressing public discussion of these changes to prevent protests by parents and others who may be concerned about their impact on the young Tibetans' connection to their culture and identity, the sources added.

The actions of the Chinese authorities in Tibet over the past few months have drawn heavy criticism from Tibetan religious leaders and the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).

In January, Ling Rimpoche (reincarnation of the Dalai Lama's teacher) rebuked China for the destruction of Tibetan Buddhist literature and Buddhist identity including the destruction of the Dalai Lama's palace, a huge number of monasteries and Buddha statues of historical and religious value as well as systematically reducing the Tibetans to a state of destitution in their own country.

He further emphasized that the Chinese are destroying Buddhism in order to destroy the identity of the Tibetans.

Earlier in November last year, Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration, Dharamshala accused China of implementing a 'One nation, one party, one language, one culture' policy in occupied Tibet and said that Tibetans as a people and culture was being subjected to a slow death, the report said.

( With inputs from ANI )

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