CHINA’S ATTEMPTS TO WIPE OUT THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF TIBET
Tibetan Response to China’s White Paper of 25 September 2008
[Friday, 13 November 2009, 9:52 a.m.]
FOREWORD On
27 September 2009, the Chinese government issued a white paper on its
nationalities policy. This is the third white paper on the minority
nationalities. The first was issued in 1999 and the second in 2005.
Meanwhile on 25 September 2008, the Chinese government issued a white
paper on the protection and development of Tibetan culture. The
latest white paper issued by the Information Office of the State
Council, the Chinese cabinet, comes in the wake of the most sustained
and widespread protests in both Tibet and Xinjiang in 2008 and 2009,
respectively. These protests, growing out of economic marginalisation
and racial discrimination, were mercilessly suppressed with
unprecedented military force. The latest white paper comes
four days before the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic of China on
1 October. It seems that this white paper is the Chinese government’s
birthday gift to the minority nationalities. Will the minority
nationalities accept this official and repeated whitewashing of the
atrocities they have suffered under the Communist Party for these
years? During these years their identities have been undermined, in
some cases, erased, their cultures broken, their languages made useless
and their legitimate aspirations for greater freedoms and more civil
liberties actively suppressed. The answers to these question
and the issues raised by them are explored in a specifically Tibetan
context by a group of officials of the Central Tibetan Administration
and the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a human rights
watchdog based in Dharamsala.The Tibetan response is broadly
divided into four chapters, which in turn are divided into many
sub-headings. The four main chapters are: 1) The Status of Learning,
Using and promoting Tibetan Language; 2) The Status of Tibetan Cultural
Preservation in Tibet; 3) The Status of Religious Freedom in Tibet; and
4) The Status of Modern Scientific Education and Development of the
Media inside Tibet. In this rejoinder, a substantial amount of
evidence has been meticulously put together to make a compelling case
that the Chinese government has committed — and is committing — nothing
less than cultural genocide on the world’s roof. This evidence is
sourced primarily from the documents brought out by the Chinese
government itself, and also from the oral and written statements,
opinions or suggestions made by Tibetans inside Tibet. Viewpoints of
the Tibetan exiles and foreign experts or scholars on Tibet are
deliberately not included. As the political struggle of the
Tibetan people [for greater freedoms in Tibet] is increasingly being
recognised on the international stage as the struggle between truth and
falsehood, we hope this response will go a long way towards vindicating
the truth that basically lies on the side of the Tibetans. (Click here for full text)
