A new report by Human Rights Watch argues that the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in schools in Tibet raises “serious concerns under international human rights law”.
A new report by Human Rights Watch argues that the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in schools in Tibet raises “serious concerns under international human rights law”.
It isn’t cultural genocide to teach the only useful language in the region, while requiring the cultural language also be taught.
Who are you to decide which languages are useful and which ones are not? Chinese is a very basic picture based language, barely a step above cave paintings. The people of Tibet will never progress if they are forced to use such a basic, primitive language. Relative to their population China has produced a pathetic quantity of great literature, maybe if China was to adopt the Tibetan language the quality of their literature would improve.
Who are you to decide what languages are useful?
Cultural erasure is a form of genocide by most definitions.
China is not just requiring the teaching of Mandarin, it is taking steps to eradicate the use of Tibetan and other non-Han languages.
And yes, Western countries have done it too, and it’s just as much a crime when they do it. For example, in Britain, children used to be punished for speaking Welsh or Gaelic in schools. The same happened with Catalan and Basque in Spain. Those are just two of many examples.