(TibetanReview.net, May14’26) – The Japan Parliamentary Support Group for Tibet has recently held a hearing on Tibet in which the speakers have focused on a range of issues that are stated to threaten the survival of the Tibetan national and cultural identity under China’s ongoing move to engineer a Han Chinese-centric common national identity.
The speakers were stated to have focused on China’s religious repression that included interfering in the recognition of reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist masters, its colonial boarding school system in Tibet, and the recently adopted ethnic unity and progress law. Environmental destruction and damming of the Tibetan rivers were also topics of discussion.
The panel of speakers was led by Representative Dr. Tsewang Gyalpo Arya of the Liaison Office of HH the Dalai Lama for Japan and East Asia, based in Tokyo. He has spoken about the severity of China’s current policies in Tibet that included banning Tibetans from communicating with fellow-
Tibetans outside the country, and religious repression that included interfering in the recognition of of the reincarnation of HH the Dalai Lama,
He has also sought to drive home the point that Tibet is an independent country under illegal, colonial occupation by China, pointing to books such as “Tibet Explained,” by Michael Van Walt Praag and Miek Boltjes’ and “Tibet was never part of China since antiquity” by Prof Hon-Shiang Lau.
Dr Gyal Lo, an educational sociologist and leading expert on China’s assimilation and education policies in Tibet, has explained how Tibetan children are being denied their fundamental right to their mother tongue and religious culture, and how China is planning to erase Tibetan identity through its recently adopted ethnic unity law.
Dr Lobsang Yangtso from the International Tibet Network has explained how China’s dam-building spree in Tibet poses grave threat to the existence and survival of the downstream countries. She has warned that if Tibet’s water is controlled by a single authoritarian power, without accountability and transparency, Asia’s water future will be in danger of being weaponized.
Others who took part in the panel discussion were stated to include Dorjee Tsetan from the Tibet Action Institute, Tsering Dorjee from the Students for Free Tibet Japan, Ms Jyotsana Mehra from the Closed Door Consulting, and Tashi Yangzom and Hasegawa Naoko from Tibet House Japan.
Lawmaker Yamatani Eriko, Chairperson of the Japan Parliamentary Support Group for Tibet, has said the panel discussion greatly helped enrich the understanding of the Tibet issue. She has said her parliamentary group was committed to help address the Tibet issue. The group’s General Secretary Ishikawa has also assured the parliamentary group’s full support for Tibet following the panel discussion.
The venue was the Japanese Lower House Parliament building conference hall at Nagatacho, Tokyo.
(Source: Tibet.net, May 13, 2026)