Hundreds of Tibetans take preservation of Tibetan language into their own hands

18 February 2011

Hundreds of ordinary Tibetans across Qinghai and the Tibetan Autonomous Region are taking the preservation of the Tibetan language into their own hands and setting up Tibetan language classes in their communities. Tibetan monks, teachers and university students are holding Tibetan language classes and workshops in their communities to combat the increasing dominance of Chinese language in education (1), business and public offices.

Free Tibet Director Stephanie Brigden said:

“Chinese policies that promote the use of Chinese in almost all walks of public life in Tibet are aimed at systematically wiping out the Tibetan language as part of China’s wider strategy to cement its occupation of Tibet. Tibetans are responding to this threat to their identity by acting together to preserve their language.”

Although China’s constitution guarantees ‘the freedom of all nationalities to use and develop their own spoken and written languages’, the threat to the survival of the Tibetan language is one of the most pressing and urgent concerns of Tibetans living under Chinese rule (2). These concerns are regularly expressed in articles, blogs, songs and in discussions among friends.

"Language is the soul of the nation. When language is gone, the nation dies.”

Tibetan blogger December 2010

Speaking from the safety of Dharamsala, North India, Tashi (3), a monk from Qinghai Province, told how he and two fellow monks, recognising that most Tibetans can no longer read or write in Tibetan, set up classes for local children, teaching them to read, write and speak Tibetan. The classes proved so popular that a growing number of people from the surrounding areas joined the scheme. As the project flourished local police began to take note; eight policemen came and ordered the monks not to hold any further classes.

Just a few days before 10 March 2010, a time of year when the Chinese administration is always particularly wary of Tibetans gathering together (4), local police detained the key organiser of the scheme and questioned him for several days. The project was forced to close. 

Ends

Notes to Editor

(1)  The policy of using Chinese as the language of instruction in schools and universities has resulted in Tibet having the highest illiteracy rate of all China's regions, even after 60 years of Chinese occupation.  Many Tibetans drop out of school due to the difficulty in following classes in a foreign language – Chinese, but are also not able to read, write and increasingly speak their own language properly due to the lack of instruction in Tibetan coupled with the widespread use of Chinese in public life.  As most secondary education and all higher education is taught exclusively in Mandarin and entrance exams to universities are in Chinese, Tibetans are less likely to gain access to higher education than their Chinese class-mates. This in turn perpetuates poverty among Tibetans.

(2)  In October 2010, thousands of Tibetan students in Qinghai, some as young as 12, protested on the streets at the introduction of policies that would widen the use of Chinese as the language of instruction in education.

(3)  This monk’s name has been changed to protect him.

(4)  10 March is the anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising in 1959 when it is believed that over 86,000 Tibetans were killed by Chinese forces. On 10 March 2008 Tibetan protests against the Chinese occupation began in Lhasa and spread from there across the Tibetan plateau.

(5)Free Tibet is an international campaigning organisation that stands for the right of Tibetans to determine their own future. We campaign for an end to the Chinese occupation of Tibet and for the fundamental human rights of Tibetans to be respectedree Tibet is an international campaigning organisation that stands for the right of Tibetans to determine their own future. We campaign for an end to the Chinese occupation of Tibet and for the fundamental human rights of Tibetans to be respected.

For further information and interviews please contact Free Tibet’s Director Stephanie Brigden

E: stephanie@freetibet.org

T: +44 (0)20 7324 4605

M: +44 (0)7971 479515