Extraordinary repression hit Tibet in connection with the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It is happening again.
by Tenzin Younten
Amidst the massive surge of the Omicron variant of the dreaded COVID-19 virus across the world, China insists to fanfaronade its mammoth economic growth and its influence by holding the most controversial and contested Olympics game this winter. However, it is pertinent to understand that Beijing Olympics 2022 became a powerful propaganda tool for the Chinese government, as it tries to make its cultural genocide actions and repressions in Tibet and East Turkestan (Ch. Xinjiang), and against other religious and ethnic minorities seem benign.
Since the Beijing Olympics 2008, the Chinese crackdown on Tibetan religion, traditions, language, culture, and livelihood has further worsened. The severity of the human rights violation in Tibet has forced a spate of self-immolations across Tibetan Plateau since 2009. So far, more than 155 cases of self-immolation are reported in Tibet. Under the euphemism of “national security,” “separatist activities,” and “national unity,” Chinese authorities have relentlessly detained, imprisoned, and tortured Tibetans throughout their authoritarian rule.
Signs of cultural genocide writ large across Tibet, as it is ranked along with Syria as the least free country in 2021 by Freedom House, a U.S based Human Rights watchdog.
Table of Contents
China’s destruction of Tibetan Buddhism has reached unprecedented scale
The Chinese Communist Party’s war on Tibetan culture and identity has deepened over the years. The Cultural-Revolution-like assault on Tibetan Buddhism has been reinforced in 2021.
The Tibetan Buddhist community in Serthar (Ch. Seda) county in eastern Tibet continues to face religious suppression. On May 8, 2021, a political education drive aimed towards indoctrination of the monastic population was enforced by the local authorities. Under this decree, the monastic population is forced to identify themselves with “the great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Chinese Communist Party, and Socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
On July 31, 2021, large numbers of police were deployed by Chinese authorities to a Tibetan monastery called Khamar to carry out forced eviction of the monks and nuns and forced closure of the monastery. This eviction drive is prevalent across Tibet. On October 21 and 22, many Tibetan monks from the Jakyung monastery and Ditsa monastery in Tibet’s Tsongon Prefecture (in China’s Qinghai province) were also forcefully expelled by the Chinese authorities.
According to a report in November 2021, Tibetan CCP members and cadres in Tsolho (Ch. Hainan) were further forbidden from practising their faith or engaging in religious activities even in their homes under the Chinese “code of conduct.”
China’s crackdown in Kham Drakgo in December 2021 continued with the horrific demolition of a 99-foot-long Buddha statue and 45 huge prayer wheels built in Drakgo Monastery. In addition, the Chinese authorities had also burned down the prayer flags in the entire vicinity. Earlier this week, a 30-foot Maitreya statue in Drakgo monastery was destroyed on state’s order. China’s crackdown on Buddhism is not limited to Tibet, as the demolition of Buddhist statues was prevalent in China too.
The Tibetan language is tottering on the brink of extinction
China’s language oppression in Tibet has escalated in 2021, clearly illuminating its cultural genocide aim of linguistic extinction in Tibet.
In one vivid example of such linguistic oppression, a new campaign was launched across the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to subordinate Tibetan language to Chinese in all official signage. According to a Human Rights Watch report of July 21, 2021, the Chinese government has uniformly placed Chinese Mandarin above Tibetans on public signboards, notices, and banners throughout the TAR. In July 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a decree forcing Tibetan children in preschools across Tibet to learn Chinese Mandarin. Under this order, all preschools across ethnic and rural areas are mandated to adopt Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction.
Chinese Mandarin has replaced and supplanted the Tibetan language as the medium of instruction across the schools in Tibet under the sham “bi-lingual system.” Tibetan children are compelled to seek Tibetan language tuition outside the schools to retain their mother tongue. In October 2021, Chinese authorities in Amdo region imposed a ban on learning Tibetan language even outside the schools during the winter holidays.
Tibetan schools and students have incessantly been targeted by the Chinese authorities in the past years over their language rights. By the end of 2020, private Tibetan schools offering classes in the Tibetan language across the Dzachukha region in Kardze (Ch. Ganzi) had been shut down, and their students were coerced to join government-run schools. Similarly, on July 8, 2021, a private Tibetan school called Sengdruk Taktse Middle School in Golog, Amdo, was forcibly closed down.
According to another report on August 25, 2021, the Gyalten local school in Kardze (Ch. Ganzi) was threatened with forced closure if it failed to accept Chinese as the medium of instruction. On October 31, 2021, the government ordered the demolition of Gaden Nangten School, a Buddhist school in Drakgo (Ch. Luhuo) County. No doubt, these schools served as a quintessential place for Tibetan students to learn their language and culture.
Under China’s “coercive labour program,” 700,000 Tibetans underwent political indoctrination in 2021
Beginning in 2020, the Chinese government has launched a large-scale coercive labour program across Tibet, whereby Tibetans are forcibly subjected to thought transformation, intrusive surveillance, political re-education, military-style training, and punitive punishments.
In February 2021, Chinese authorities announced plans for mass “vocational skill training” in the TAR, as 700,000 Tibetan farmers and nomads were targeted for coercive labour programs. Earlier in September 2020, a report published by the Jamestown Foundation revealed that over half a million Tibetans had undergone coercive military-styled labour training in the first half of that year.
The massive “coercive labour program” in Tibet is intrinsic to China’s policy of assimilation of Tibetan culture and identity.
China’s campaign to obliterate Tibetan identity is prevalent across its state-run schools
According to a Tibet Action Institute report in December 2021, around 800,000 Tibetan students have been forcibly separated from their families and homes to join the state-run boarding schools. The rounding of the Tibetan students into a vast network of state-sponsored boarding schools across Tibet was indirectly aimed at wiping out the culture and language of the Tibetan people. The vast network of centralised boarding schools has been effectively used by the Chinese government to manipulate and indoctrinate the Tibetan children. Within the schools, Tibetan students are not only separated from their families and communities, but are also subjected to intensive political indoctrination, compelled to study Chinese, and prohibited from practising their religion and culture.
Another historic Tibetan uprising in the making following China’s widespread repression
The situation in Tibet during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the current situation inside Tibet bear a strong resemblance. The outbreak of the historic uprising in Tibet in 2008 was foreshadowed by an intensified attack on Tibetan religion and culture in all forms and manners earlier in 2007.
During the mass uprising in 2008, the Chinese government violently suppressed the peaceful Tibetan protestors with brutal crackdown and repression, resulting in at least 227 Tibetan deaths, arrests, the detention of over 6,810 Tibetans, and the imprisonment of several hundreds more.
In the wake of the abhorrent state of human rights and staggering evidence of cultural genocide in Tibet since Beijing 2008, it becomes clear that another Tibetan mass uprising around the Beijing 2022 Olympics is a possibility.
Dr. Tsering Topgyal, a Tibetan writer attributed the root cause of the 2008 uprising in Tibet to the widespread identity insecurity felt by Tibetans. Dr. Topgyal also warned that, “The harsh crackdown and continuing repression has fuelled great resentment and insecurity among the Tibetans. The insecurity dilemma has not finished its tragic run, and it seems just a matter of time before Tibetan will vent their pent-up fury again.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s continuation of its hard-line policies and strengthening of its “sinicization” campaign to eliminate Tibetan culture and identity since 2008 means that the underlying grievances of the Tibetan people have been blatantly neglected. And the resentment against the Chinese government and its policies are pervasive across Tibet.
Beijing has already begun to tighten its security across Tibet ahead of the forthcoming Olympics, as mass mobilisations of its armed forces and travel restrictions have been imposed in Tibetan cities, including Lhasa, Shigatse, Chamdo, Drakgo, Ngaba, and Rebkong. A catastrophic level of destruction and devastation could take place in Tibet amid a potential Tibetan uprising as China looks to respond with further crackdowns and repression in Tibet.
Conclusion
The series of China’s international aggressions through its “wolf warrior diplomacy” that includes the debt-trap diplomacy, demographic aggression, assimilation of South-China Sea, and its sheer recklessness during the on-going COVID-19 global crisis, has caused tremendous devastations across the globe. Consequently, a colossal humanitarian crisis in Tibet and other Chinese occupied regions such as East Turkestan, accompanying the upcoming Beijing Olympics, would further cause irreversible devastation to the very survival of Tibetan and Uyghur people and nations. Therefore, some have judiciously labelled the upcoming Beijing Olympics as the“Genocide Games,” and the international community should face the ramifications of the CCP’s crimes against humanity.