(TibetanReview.net, Sep11’24) – Forced to leave their monastery to be enrolled in a government-run colonial-style boarding school meant to Sinicize them and where they found the conditions atrocious, five Tibetan boys have attempted to commit suicide in a historically Tibetan region that is now part of China’s Sichuan Province, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org Sep 9. They have spoken of being ill-treated, discriminated against and subjected to political education.
The incident had occurred in the province’s Zungchu (Chinese: Songpan) county of Ngawa (or Ngaba, Chinese: Aba) prefecture. They were stopped by six Tibetans, the report said, citing two local residents and a video clip of the incident recorded by a resident.
“We find it unbearable to stay in the school, which is like a prison,” the report quoted one of the boys as exclaiming in the video.
“They don’t give us good food and beat us,” another boy has said.
The former monks, wearing school uniforms and ages 13 and 14, were stated to have tried to jump into a river.
“These young monks were trying to jump into the river over there and take their own lives,” the video recorder was quoted as saying.
The video was stated to show the young boys scrying and saying they find it “unbearable” to stay at the school, speaking of being discriminated against, beaten, and deprived of “good food.”
They were reported to speak of being treated differently from other students, with the conditions in the school being akin to that of a “prison”.
They have also complained of being denied the regular educational curriculum taught to the rest of the students and, instead, subjected to strict political education.
One of the boys is said to be seen crying and saying it was difficult to bear the mistreatment, citing an example in which they were not given water to take with their medicine when feeling unwell.
The boys were stated to also feel aggrieved at not being allowed to wear their monk’s robes in the school.
Elsewhere, earlier, in Apr, a 17-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk in Qinghai province, who had also been forced to leave his monastery three years ago and enrolled in a local school, was reported to have died by suicide after school authorities withdrew an earlier monk-robe wearing exception they had made for him.