(TibetanReview.net, Sep01’23) – China has on Aug 31 vowed to impose tit-for-tat sanctions on US officials in retaliation for Washington’s recent announcement to impose visa curbs on Chinese officials responsible for Beijing’s “forced assimilation” boarding school system in Tibet.
“China will impose, on a reciprocal basis, visa restrictions on US individuals who spread rumors to smear China in this case or have long meddled in Tibet-related issues,” fmprc.gov.cn, the official website of China’s foreign ministry quoted spokesman Wang Wenbin as saying during a regular press conference in Beijing Aug 31.
The website further quoted Wang as saying, “The US imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials based on fabricated lies on Tibet in disregard of the facts. This move gravely interferes in China’s internal affairs, harms China’s interests, and violates basic norms governing international relations. We firmly oppose and categorically reject it.”
Wang wanted the US to “respect facts, change course, stop spreading disinformation on Tibet, and stop using Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
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The Chinese announcement was in response to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement of new visa restrictions against Chinese officials last week for their suspected involvement in the “forced assimilation” of more than 1 million Tibetan children in government-run boarding schools.
Blinken said in a statement that Beijing’s policy sought to “eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans”.
The statement did not name individuals or organisations that would face the sanction.
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In February, three United Nations special rapporteurs on minority issues, education and cultural rights published a report raising concerns about Tibet’s residential school system, describing it as “a mandatory large-scale programme intended to assimilate Tibetans into majority Han culture”.
The report said children of Tibetan ethnicity were forced to complete a “compulsory education” curriculum in Mandarin, with no access to traditional or culturally relevant learning.
It further said that many of the region’s rural schools have closed, forcing children living in many Tibetan communities to move away from their families to attend county-level boarding schools where instruction is almost exclusively in Mandarin.
Instruction in standard Chinese – both spoken and written – has become an important policy in the country’s ethnic minority regions to curb separatism, said scmp.com Aug 31, reporting on Wang’s statement.