(TibetanReview.net, Dec18’23) – Stung by the international media’s coverage of its Dec 14 resolution on “the abduction of Tibetan children and forced assimilation practices through Chinese boarding schools in Tibet”, China’s official media has lashed out at the European Parliament, hurling vile epithets about it being nothing but anti-China.
The resolution “ignores the facts, brazenly spreads false information, wantonly smears China’s image, and seriously interferes in China’s internal affairs,” said a chinadaily.com.cn editorial Dec 17, quoting China’s opposition to it expressed earlier through its mission to the European Union.
The resolution only employs the “boarding school” issue as an excuse. Its true purpose is to discredit the Chinese government, the editorial said.
The editorial contends, using its recently switched name for Tibet, that “rather than visiting the Xizang autonomous region to see the situation for themselves they have taken the fabrications at face value and given them their endorsement.”
But everyone knows all too well that visiting Tibet is banned for journalists, diplomats, researchers, and human rights groups unless it is especially arranged and closely supervised by the Chinese government, while individuals from outside China can travel only in organized tour groups. The purpose is to ensure that such visitors see and report nothing but what China desires of them.
The editorial said: “The high enrolment rate of the boarding school system in Xizang reflects its popularity among locals as it eases the burden of parents on the sparsely populated and highest plateau in the world who would otherwise have to accompany or worry about their children making long and arduous journeys to school every day.”
But the contention of the critics of the system is that the enrolment rate is high because parents have been coerced to send their children to these schools which are meant to Sinicize them – that its primary purpose is to make Chinese of the Tibetan people by denying them education in their own language and culture.