Sourced by Free Tibet.
Non-local students left adrift without admission and teachers not allowed to shelter orphans.
After the arrest of Rinchen Kyi, a dedicated teacher of the forcibly shut private Tibetan school of Sengdruk Taktse, Free Tibet received reports from its research partner Tibet Watch of the distress and breakdown of its closely-knit community of students.
On 8 July 2021, a week after the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary, Sengdruk Taktse Middle School, was closed without providing any official clarification and all the students were told to enrol in other government-affiliated schools in the region. Despite the co-founder of the school, Khandrul Jigme Kunsang Gyaltsen, keeping to the school’s founding principles of providing education to the destitute, orphaned, and those without the means to access formal schooling, his urgent plea to reconsider the decision was not heeded.
A petition written by an alumnus of the school in Darlag County, located in Golog, eastern Tibet, explained in a heartfelt poem, the meaning of the school to Tibetan culture, children’s future and the aspirations of Tibetan nomads and farmers. Despite the petitioner’s hope and call for the survival of the school, whose gratitude and care was referred to as that of a mother, the school currently remains closed without any clarification about its legal status, ownership of its properties and its future.
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