FreeTibet.org 1 February 2021
Chinese authorities have declared that local laws requiring the use of spoken and written languages among “ethnic minorities” are “unconstitutional”.
The pronouncement, reported by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), was made by the National People’s Congress, in January, and appears to be part of a wider effort by the Chinese Communist Party to assimilate minority nationalities into a single Chinese national identity.
On 20 January, the Director of the Legal Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, Shen Chungyao, announced that schools in “minority areas” were no longer allowed to teach their own languages, declaring such education to be “unconstitutional”. In a report that he presented, Shen emphasised the superiority of national laws over local laws in autonomous provinces and regions by stating that all local regulations violate “the country’s major reform directions” and “the provisions of the higher-level law”.
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