[lg policy] Tibetan culture disappears with language-Asia Times

Mon Nov 8 15:28:21 UTC 2010

Tibetan culture disappears with language-Asia Times
08-11-10

Mandarin education plan riles Tibetans

Saransh Sehgal

Asia Times: November 4, 2010

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LK04Ad02.html

The Chinese government’s plan to introduce Mandarin as the language of
education in Tibetan schools has prompted protests by Tibetans at home
and abroad, over fears this will lead to the decline of the Tibetan
culture. However, there is also a belief that only by learning the
national language can Tibetans in China improve their economic and
social status.  Unlike in the past, when violence involving protests
in Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas made the news, this time peaceful
protests highlight the divergence between China and Tibet.

On October 19, hundreds of Tibetan student staged a protest, chanting:
“We want equality of culture” in Tongren, also known as Rebkong, in
the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai. The protests were over a
government overhaul of the curriculum that reduced the use of the
Tibetan language in schools, making Chinese the language of the
classroom. Tongren, a heavily Tibetan area and the birthplace of the
Tibetan spiritual leader in exile – the 14th Dalai Lama – is
considered a hotbed of anti-China sentiments and is the region where
many ethnic Tibetans participated in the 2008 anti-China riots.

The protest was sparked by reported comments from the Chinese
Communist Party’s Qinghai chief, Qiang Wei, calling for the use of “a
common language” in schools and suggesting that the province would
introduce Mandarin as the teaching language over the next decade. “The
protest resulted from a new education policy which reduces Tibetan
language teaching,” said an official identified only as Mr Wang,
speaking for the International Information Office of the Qinghai
government, as reported by CNN. “The Chinese are enforcing reforms
which remind me of the Cultural Revolution,” the United Kingdom-based
Free Tibet group quoted one unnamed former Tongren teacher as saying.
“This reform is not only a threat to our mother tongue, but is in
direct violation of the Chinese constitution, which is meant to
protect our rights.”

The group said about 3,000 to 4,000 school students protested in the
region. Citing witnesses, however, China’s state media said about 800
students protested in western China. The Global Times, a Chinese
government-supported English-language newspaper, said the protest by
“students, most wearing school uniforms”, was peaceful. “Social order
was restored quickly on the same day,” a witness was quoted as saying.

The language row has spread. On October 22, about 500 students at the
Beijing campus of Minzu University of China, a leading institution for
ethnic minority students, protested for language rights. Pictures
posted on Twitter showed a group of students carrying a banner saying
“Protect ethnic minority languages, carry forward Chinese
civilization”.

The Dalai Lama and his Tibetan supporters were also fuming over the
new policy by Beijing, and rights groups have expressed serious
concerns.

The Dalai Lama, in his first reaction to the protest, said the Tibetan
language was vital for the survival of Tibetan Buddhist culture which
had a strong following in China. The Tibetan leader, who is currently
touring the United States and Canada, said, “China is historically a
Buddhist country and the preservation of the Tibetan Buddhist culture
is also in the interest of the millions of Chinese who are looking for
spiritual sustenance.” He added that China might want to learn from
the Indian experience, where the promotion of linguistic diversity is
not seen as a divisive factor.

According to Free Tibet, the language policy has already been
implemented in schools in other areas across the Tibet Autonomous
Region, including in primary schools. The rights group said the new
policy will eventually eliminate the Tibetan language and culture,
“The use of Tibetan is being systematically wiped out as part of
China’s strategy to cement its occupation of Tibet.”

Tibetan is the official language in the Tibet Autonomous Region and
also in other Chinese regions where Tibetans have traditionally been
the main ethnic group. Beijing has for decades promoted standard
Mandarin Chinese as a way of unifying a culturally diverse country,
and many Tibetans say they have little choice but to learn Mandarin if
they want to get ahead in modern China.

The new education policy change has shocked many Tibetan
intellectuals. Tsering Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan writer who
recently won this year’s Courage in Journalism award from the
International Women’s Media Foundation, has been watching the
language-policy row closely. “According to the Law on the Autonomy of
Ethnic Minority Regions, ethnic language has been heavily emphasized,”
she told Radio Free Asia.

“However, the autonomy laws are useless, as ethnic languages are
always ignored. For example, if a person from an ethnic group cannot
speak Chinese but can speak his native language well, he simply cannot
find a job.” Woeser, who is also a blogger, circulated a mobile-phone
text message that said, “In order to save our mother tongue, many
Tibetan students are protesting in Tibetan areas advocating for the
Tibetan language. We need your attention.”

The Qinghai provincial education department director, Wang Yubo, was
quoted over the weekend as saying that change won’t be forced in areas
where “conditions are not ripe”. Wang also said, “The new education
policy is made according to relevant national regulations.”

“Huangnan prefecture held a conference after the protest happened and
formed a working team headed by a deputy director of the provincial
education department. The working team went to Huangnan and explained
the new education policy to the students. The students ended the
demonstration shortly afterward. Right now, the provincial government
is communicating with the local schools, and the working team is
communicating with local students as well.” He added, “If the
suggestions of protesting students are reasonable, it’s likely that
the government will consider them.”

The language issue is a complex one and intimately linked to Tibet’s
political struggle. While many Tibetans feel that Beijing is eroding
the Tibetan culture, and are threatened by development and the
migration of China’s ethnic Han majority, they also hope their
children can learn Mandarin in order to get higher-income jobs. Many
Tibetans say they have little choice but to learn Mandarin if they
want to get ahead in modern China.

But many Tibetan students still fear that the bilingual system will
lead to the use of Chinese alone, except in Tibetan-language classes.
Modern Chinese art expert Li Xianting learned of the Tibetan language
deficiency when he recently helped organize an exhibition of
contemporary Tibetan art in Beijing. Li said he was very surprised
when one of the young Tibetan artists, who was literate in Tibetan
because his parents were professors, told him that some of the other
Tibetan artists could not write Tibetan words correctly. He said it
was not fair to Tibetans that they did not get enough instruction in
their own language. He thinks globalization should mean
multiculturalism, not the eradication of local cultures.

China defended its language policy, “The purpose of the bilingual
education-reform plan is to strengthen whatever is weaker, not use one
language to weaken another,” Xinhua news agency quoted Wang as saying.

The plan, Wang said, would boost both Putonghua and minorities’ native
languages. Under the new policy, bilingual lessons will be adopted in
primary schools by 2015, meaning Chinese language will be the main
medium, and ethnic languages will be a supplement.

Beijing said that promoting Mandarin among minorities would help them
catch up with the Han majority in economic status, bridging the income
gap between Han Chinese and the country’s 55 minority groups.

However, Stephanie Brigden with Free Tibet said the public fear that
the Tibetan language would be cut from schools showed the gulf of
credibility between official rhetoric and what Tibetans actually
perceive. “I think this is a good example of the difference between
what is promised and what is delivered. This is the case whether we
are talking about education rights, whether we are talking about who
is benefiting from development in Tibet, or if we are talking about
whether torture takes place in Tibet.”

Tibetans in exile joined the Dalai Lama in slamming the language
policy. Samphel Thupten, spokesman for the Tibetan government in exile
based in Dharamsala, India, said the Tibetan students were right to
protest. “The Tibetan language is disavowed and this will do huge
damage to the Tibetan identity. Here in Dharamsala, the Tibetan
language is compulsory and Tibetan children have a firm grasp.” Added
Thupten: “China should review its policy.”

Speaking to Asia Times Online, Karma Gelek Yuthok, secretary of the
Department of Education for the exiled Central Tibetan Administration,
said it looked like China was not abiding by its constitution. “The
Chinese say something and do something else; they want everything
Chinese, which is not a thought of the 21st century. Though I
personally have a feeling that very little of Tibetan culture will
remain in Tibet, we have planned accordingly. For we in exile need
extra energy to preserve the culture and language.”

One student in the Tibetan school in Dharamsala said, “Learning our
language and culture comes first. My parents fled from Tibet just to
take sure I kept my identity.”

At a press conference in Dharamsala, Dokru Choedak – who heads a group
working for the preservation of the Tibetan language – said they would
send signed petitions to the United Nations Children’s Fund and other
international organizations. “Schools and language are the fabric of
national identity. Unfortunately the Chinese authorities have
reportedly identified schools as ‘base camps to fight against the
Dalai Clique and outside separatist forces’.”

The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), a radical organization of Tibetans
in exile, has planned protest rallies from Dharamsala to New Delhi on
November 12. “The Tibetan language is intrinsically linked to Tibetan
culture and identity. Denying Tibetans the right to learn in their own
language is denying them the right to exist as a people” said Tenzin
Choekyi, the TYC’s general secretary.

TYC called China the biggest colonizer of modern times and appealed to
the international media covering the Asian Games to highlight the
Chinese violation of the human rights of Tibetans.

Interestingly, support for Tibetans protesters has even come from
inside China. Ilham Tohti, an outspoken Uyghur professor at Minzu
University of China and webmaster of Uighurbiz.net, said Uyghur
students at his school had been eager to join in protests with their
Tibetan classmates. “From the beginning of the Qinghai protests,
Uyghur students studying at my university were all supportive. Some
students came to my office and said they want to protest with the
Tibetan students, but I advised them that we can support them without
protesting.”

A teacher in Xinjiang told news website the Tibet Post, “Every Uyghur
teacher and student is supporting Tibet right now, because we have the
same problems here.”

Saransh Sehgal is a contributor based in Dharamsala, India. He can be
reached at info at mcllo.com.

http://facthai.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/tibetan-culture-disappears-with-language-asia-times/

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal,
and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.
 A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman,
Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list