: China’s Residential Schools Separate a Million Tibetan Children From Their Families, U.N. Says #WorldNEWS Veiled behind the Himalayas, occupying a frigid plateau twice the size of Texas dubbed the

China’s Residential Schools Separate a Million Tibetan Children From Their Families, U.N. Says #WorldNEWS
Veiled behind the Himalayas, occupying a frigid plateau twice the size of Texas dubbed the “roof of the world,” Tibet is truly a land apart. Tibetans share a lineage with Chinese, Mongol, and Siberian peoples, though are distinguished by a genetic mutation that enables them to thrive at over 13,000 ft. above sea level, as well as by a number of stark cultural differences, including their own language, religion, and customs.
Traditionally, Tibetans rarely washed, believing it bad for their health (at the high altitude’s icy temperatures, maybe with some justification). It is also a matriarchal society, where women have been able to choose to bear children with several different lovers without reproach. And Chinese mores like removing shoes at the door are utterly alien.

Yet an accelerating assimilation campaign waged by the ruling Chinese Communist Party is threatening to utterly erase Tibet’s unique way of life. The latest salvo was revealed Monday, when three U. N. experts warned that roughly 1 million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and forcibly placed into Chinese state-run boarding schools, as part of efforts to absorb them “culturally, religiously and linguistically” into the dominant Han Chinese culture.
The scheme involves placing children from rural communities into residential schools, where lessons are conducted solely in Mandarin Chinese with scant reference to Tibetan history, religion, and certainly not exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The result is that many children forget their native tongue and struggle to communicate with their parents when they return home, which is typically just for a week or two each year. While the proportion of Chinese students at boarding schools is around 20% nationwide, the U. N. experts believe the vast majority of Tibetan children are in large residential schools following the systematic shuttering of rural classrooms.
“The residential school system for Tibetan children appears to act as a mandatory large-scale program intended to assimilate Tibetans into majority Han culture, contrary to international human rights standards,” Fernand de Varennes, U. N. special rapporteur on minority issues; Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education; and Alexandra Xanthaki, special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, said in a joint statement.
Its the latest case of a prolonged cultural assault on China’s minorities—chiefly Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongols—since strongman President Xi Jinping took office in 2012. The most egregious example is the extrajudicial detention of up to 2 million Uighurs and other Muslims in reeducation camps in western Xinjiang province, which the U.