{"id":229843,"date":"2023-02-20T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=229843"},"modified":"2023-02-18T04:25:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T04:25:25","slug":"human-rights-rapporteurs-express-concern-on-education-of-tibetan-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/02\/human-rights-rapporteurs-express-concern-on-education-of-tibetan-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Rapporteurs Express Concern on Education of Tibetan Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

17 Feb 2023 – <\/em>\u00a0 Three United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteurs have recently highlighted the quality and methods of education of Tibetan students.\u00a0 Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on Minortiy Issues, and Alexandra Xanthaki, Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, first expressed their concern in a private letter to the U.N. Mission of China in Geneva.\u00a0 This is the standard procedure of first trying to discuss an issue with the authorities of the State concened.\u00a0 When the reply of the government is non-existent or superficial, then the Special Rapporteurs can “go public” either in their report to the Human Rights Council or with a press release as is the case with Tibetan education.<\/p>\n

The 6 February 2023 U.N. Press Release quotes fully the statement sent to the Chinese Mission.\u00a0 The Special Rapporteurs highlighted the one million Tibetan school children sent far from home to be in residential boarding schools.\u00a0 The Special Rapporteurs are ” very disturbed that in recent years the residential school system for Tibetan children appears to act as a mandatory large-scale programme intended to assimilate Tibetans into majority Han culture, contrary to international human rights standards…. This\u00a0 increase in the number of boarding Tibetan students is achieved by the closure of rural schools in areas which tend to be populated by Tibetans and their replacement by township or county-level schools which almost exclusively use Putonghua in teaching and communication.”\u00a0 Putonghua is the official name for what is usually called “Mandarin Chinese.”<\/p>\n

Recently, there has been more international media and governmental attention given to the repression and “re-education” of the largely Muslim Uighur.\u00a0 Less attention has been given to policies in Tibet, but from the Chinese government position, the issues are very similar.\u00a0 In both cases, an ethnic minority is a majority population in a large frontier area. In both cases, the population in question is bound together by a common religion: Islam for the Uighur, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for the\u00a0 Tibetans.\u00a0 The Chinese government is fearful that groups advocating violence will influence the Uighur as there are a good number of such Muslim advocates in Central Asia and the wider Middle East.\u00a0 The major external influence on the Tibetans is the Dalai Lama, and he has repeatedly stressed non-violence in activities, including\u00a0 protests of Chinese government policy.\u00a0 Thus the\u00a0 government’s greater fears of violence among the Uighur.\u00a0 \u00a0Repression has focused\u00a0 not only on students but on adults as well.<\/p>\n

Finding the right balance between maintaining alive a minority culture through education in the minority language and the need for education in the national language is not easy to find.\u00a0 Education in English has served to develop “American population” in the U.S.A.<\/p>\n

The languages of the American Indian tribes has been reduced to folklore.\u00a0 Finding the right balance for Tibetan students will not be easy to develop even if there were no political issues at stake.\u00a0 However, politics is “the name of the game.”<\/p>\n

The U.N. Human Rights Council has a number of Special Rapporteurs devoted to certain sensitive themes or to specific countries.\u00a0 These Special Rapporteurs are independent experts selected by the Council. They are not members of the Secretariat and are not paid, but their expenses are covered when in Geneva or on mission. They idea\u00a0 for the creation of the Special Rapporteurs was to give them as much independence as possible from\u00a0 pressure of both governments and the U.N. Secretariat.\u00a0 The U. N. Special Rapporteurs public statement\u00a0 on the education of Tibetan\u00a0 students will draw new attention to an issue which merits being closely watched.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/em>______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a><\/em>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Feb 2023 – Three UNHRC Special Rapporteurs have recently highlighted the quality and methods of education of Tibetan students. When the reply of the government is non-existent or superficial, then the SR can “go public.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":117522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[258,1807,124],"class_list":["post-229843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-education","tag-tibet","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}