(TibetanReview.net, Mar14’26) – The UN’s top human rights official, Volker Turk, has expressed concerns Mar 13 over what China calls its “ethnic unity” law, saying it could restrict freedom of religion and culture, reported the AFP Mar 14. China will now cite this law to further justify its colonial-style boarding school system in Tibet, the forced closing of privately run Tibetan schools there, and the persecution of their founders.
The law, passed Mar 12 by the National People’s Congress – China’s parliament – formalises China’s policies to promote Mandarin as the “national common language” in education, official business and public places.
Rights advocates have warned that the new law could further marginalise minority groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols.
Expressing “concern” over China’s move on his X platform account, Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote: “This risks entrenching assimilationist policies in statute, restricting minority-language education, and limiting free practice of religion and culture.
“Its provisions could overly restrict freedoms of expression, belief and assembly and penalise peaceful exercise of minority rights generally.
“International human rights law requires states to protect identities of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities.”
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When criticized for their well-documented, ongoing genocidal policies and actions in Tibet and East Turkestan (Xinjiang), Chinese leaders often accuse Canada of hypocrisy, pointing to the latter’s historical and present treatment of Indigenous peoples (often called “First Nations,” Inuit, and Métis in Canada). In particular, it criticizes Canada’s colonial history, including the residential school system, in which indigenous children were taken from families and forced into boarding schools.
And so, while accusing Canada of having committed “cultural genocide” against the indigenous population in its past history, China itself doing exactly that in this time and age of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and democracy – both of which it swears by – on the Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongol and other so-called ethnic minority populations, using the euphemisms of promoting “ethnic unity”, “national cohesion” and “sense or community for the Chinese nation” and what not.
The law to promote “ethnic unity”puts legislative stamp on an ongoing assimilation drive, otherwise known as “Sinization”, that President Xi Jinping unleashed with a renewed vigour when he came to power more than a decade ago, in 2012.
The law mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school. Previously, students could study most of the curriculum in their native language such as Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian.
Even before the law was adopted, China this year removed Tibetan as a subject in this year’s national college entrance tests for applicants in Tibet Autonomous Region.
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While the law itself is concerning enough, the real alarm lies in its implementation which involves the use of coercive measures and co-opting of China’s criminal justice system to punish alleged violators.
The law will now be cited for the legitimacy of the colonial style boarding school system that has seen nearly a million Tibetan children taken away from their parents and communities to be crafted into loyal Communist-Party of China subjects imbued with skills in Chinese language and culture, but alien even to their own mother tongue.
The law will also be cited for the forced closing down in Tibet in recent years of a number of privately run schools that taught Tibetan language and culture and put in jail their philanthropic founders. Many of the founders have been prominent religious figures, including even those who held official local and provincial-level positions.
Those schools taught both Tibetan and Chinese to their students, although some coaching-classes focused on teaching Tibetan during school holidays for interested students.