r/worldnews
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u/MrJasonMason
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Feb 07 '23
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Roughly 1 million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and forcibly placed into state-run boarding schools, the U.N. said
https://time.com/6253481/china-tibet-million-children-separated-residential-schools/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=world_&linkId=2003968206.1k
u/tahlyn Feb 07 '23
This is cultural genocide.
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u/Killer-Barbie Feb 07 '23
It absolutely is.
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u/PapaBear12 Feb 07 '23 •
Oh, absolutely. And it may be more than just cultural genocide, too. To expand, there is definitely an argument that this could be consistent with point āEā of the definition of genocide as defined by Article II of the United Nationsā Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which reads:
"Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"
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u/curebdc Feb 07 '23
Was going to post this exact thing. It is literally the definition of genocide. But like others have pointed out... this isnt equally applied.
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u/Blarghnog Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
I really appreciate that the top comment is, āThis is cultural genocide.ā Itās supported by the evidence.
Forgive the book, this stuff is verbose by nature.
You are talking about millions of people detained in camps and intentionally separated from their children who are now bring re-educated as Chinese citizens and language speakers. In addition to the mass detention and separation of children from their families to be re-educated as which are clear crimes against humanity ā they are also doing sterilization of women at mass scale.
The UN currently will not specifically call it Genocide, which is a legal definition, but they are most certainly Crimes Against Humanity:
In an assessment by the UN Human Rights Office, the United Nations (UN) stated that China's policies and actions in the Xinjiang region may be crimes against humanity, although it did not use the term genocide. International reactions have varied.
The primary reason they havenāt been called Genocide is the tremendous pressure China has put on the civil-society organizations that make up The High Commissioner ā the organization who published the latest controversial report. It was like something out of a spy novel:
Not publishing a factual report on the situation would have gravely undermined the authority of the High Commissionerās office in the eyes of the general public, and within the U.N. system itself.
Bachelet published it, but less than fifteen minutes before she was stepping down, which lets her successor deal with the fallout.
The important part is this:
The most important element of the report is that the violations in Xinjiang and the policies carried out in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity under international human-rights law. This means that China is committing atrocities in Xinjiang, which is extraordinarily significant. To my knowledge, itās the first time that the Office of the High Commissioner has reached this determination with respect to China. China has never been accused of committing crimes against humanity by a U.N. agency. And this also dovetailed with the conclusions of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among other organizations, which have published investigations on Xinjiang.
Now, many believe China is engaging in a systematic campaign of social re-engineering and cultural Genocide.
The report also establishes two important findings.
The first is that the entire framework that China is relying on in this campaign to combat what its government calls terrorism and extremism is incompatible with its international human-rights obligations. The [supposed] crimes are vaguely defined. They are arbitrarily determined.
The second important element is that a range of very severe violationsātorture, enforced disappearances, intimidation, the stamping out of religious or cultural expressionāwere found. Both the legal basis and the implementation of the campaign are profoundly violative of human rights, and that is extremely important when it comes from a U.N. agency.
But many believe this report and others DO NOT go far enough:
- China is committing genocide. The world has no plan to stop it.
- China guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, watchdog finds
- UK independent body: China committed genocide in Xinjiang
- U.S. Holocaust Museum Says China āMay Be Committing Genocideā Against Uyghurs
I could go on, but there is no need. Just because the UN hasnāt officially released a report calling it Genocide doesnāt mean that it isnāt, and itās specifically Crimes Against Humanity already in their official report.
This definition is specifically:
Prohibited acts include:
- Murder
- Extermination
- Enslavement
- Deportation or forcible transfer of population
- Imprisonment
- Torture
- Sexual violence
- Persecution against an identifiable group
- Enforced disappearance of persons
- The crime of apartheid
- Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health
The truth is that itās definitely Crimes Against Humanity and many believe it to meet the definition of Genocide including most Holocaust groups, and itās coming in the form of forced sterilization, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, and forcible transfer by the State of China.
Letās also make sure that we include footage of the re-education camps:
- Life Inside Chinaās Reeducation Camps (WSJ)
- Chinaās Secret Internment Camps (Vox)
- Hacked Files Include Shoot-To-Kill Policy inside their detention camps (BBC)
Itās ok to look at Yemen and other areas where Western powers have or may have done wrong, but itās wrong to use them as any counterpoint to whatās happening in China, as they are tertiary and generally unrelated geopolitical issues that are really there to weaken the argument against what China is doing, and more importantly, itās comments about prior Western country failures that have been the talking points China has used to justify their own behavior so itās really important to counter.
There are many experts in the field who can further clarify the situation and definitions. Please add your voices.
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u/Vishnej Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
You really don't have to resort to this kind of barbarity to eliminate a minority which might theoretically prove rebellious, when you overwhelm them to this degree. If cultural genocide of Tibetans is what you're after:
- Provide strong positive financial & educational incentives for Tibetans to voluntarily move abroad to see the rest of China, and for young people to join the Chinese military. Free retirement pension on a tropical beach, free university in a third-tier city, subsidized housing, free healthcare, etc.
- Spread them out evenly across cities and military units, again by demand-pull opportunities. Every locality gets a certain number of slots, or a certain amount of subsidy.
- Wait for them to intermarry and learn the language themselves
Boom, peaceful cultural assimilation that the West can live with, in a generation or two.
"Re-Education Camps" and forced residential schools are some recent Han supremacists' fucked up ideas about brainwashing, with no exit strategy.
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u/PreoccupiedNotHiding Feb 07 '23
And nobody is going to stop it.
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u/Notanidiot67 Feb 07 '23
As much as it sucks, it would be WW3.
China has almost 20% of the entire world's population. They have been subjected to CCP propaganda since at least the 70s.
It would cause complete destabilization of world markets and supply chains (if you think covid was bad...). A lengthy, drawn out conventional war OR a very short one with billions of casualties.
There's no way for it not to plunge the entire planet into mass casualties due to weapons, famine, disease, and starvation.
It's a huge ask for all of us on this planet to destroy the world for something/someone you can't see or hear.
I fully support it but you need to remember what the cost will be.
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u/coredumperror Feb 07 '23
I don't think war is necessarily the only option. Economic pressures should work, eventually. And much of the world is already starting to move away from Chinese manufacturing for similar political reasons. The CCP is becoming a pariah state, ever so slowly. Someday, they're going to have to relent on these human rights abuses, or their foreign business is going to dry up.
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u/serenehide Feb 08 '23
And much of the world is already starting to move away from Chinese manufacturing for similar political reasons. The CCP is becoming a pariah state, ever so slowly.
If China moves on Taiwan the world is completely fucked. TSMC produces 90% of the worlds chips. If China takes control of that the western world will be fucked for decades.
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u/PLaTinuM_HaZe Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
Why do you think the US just green lit countless massive chip factories in which a couple of those chip factories are TSMC. If China did that to Taiwan the US would just seize those factories.
Literally the US government just invested countless billions to have almost all our chip manufacturing be domestic because of this threatā¦ other countries will be affected and be forced to choose who they get their chips from. Honestly with how dysfunctional our government has been, Iām amazed they passed this common sense investment.
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u/serenehide Feb 08 '23
Yes, and if China invades tomorrow, how long til the USA factories are up and running?
I'm very glad the US has green lit those factories, it doesn't eliminate the disruption YET
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u/GazTheLegend Feb 07 '23
Economic pressure??? From who on whom? Whatever device you are using right now, probably every component was manufactured in China. Our biggest corporations sold out for their bottom line. Well done them, but now our Western governments have -absolutely zero leverage- economically any more and frankly don't deserve any. See how ineffective the sanctions were on Russian aggression and consider that their one export was raw materials. China ... Everything.
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u/Japak121 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Considering China is actively committing literal genocide against its Uighur population as well, this isn't exactly a shocking bit of news. It's sad of course, but not at all surprising.
Edit: Not all Muslims, but a specific minority as explained in comments to this one. I appreciate all the comments that have educated me on this!
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u/SuccessfulPres Feb 07 '23
*uighur
The Hui mulims live without issue.
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u/godisanelectricolive Feb 07 '23
And Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim ethnicities.
And Hui Muslims have some restrictions regarding worship as well, they've torn down Hui mosques for looking too Middle Eastern.
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u/gizamo Feb 08 '23
Nothing in that paragraph says they are the same. The entire paragraph is literally specifying exactly how and why they are a distinct people. The phrase "share a lineage" does NOT mean "are the same".
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u/shipshapeshump Feb 07 '23
Since 1951 and continuing on. But of course, the Chinese will say it's been their territory since the 1700s.
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u/antrage Feb 07 '23
Its been happening since 1959; culture is instrumentalized into something touristic, and any remnant of their actual practices destroyed to conform to wider society. It's honestly the copying of a playbook of countries like Canada has done to indigenous peoples explicitly until the mid-90s when the last residential school global (and in my opinion still implicitly to this day).
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u/ender23 Feb 07 '23
It's been happening since the yellow emperor stomped out over a dozen cultures to creat China as a country....
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u/ShitTalkingAlt980 Feb 08 '23
Yeah that is how Nations are made. Europe did the same shit. It isn't rainbows and unicorns now we have a Nation and then a State. People resist the tides of history and get crushed.
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u/BernieEcclestoned Feb 07 '23
Definitely is. The Canadians did the same with their residential school system. But that was 150 fuckin years ago.
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u/whenigrowup356 Feb 07 '23
The last one actually closed in 1996. In the US I think it was 1969.
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u/Repulsive_Profit_315 Feb 07 '23
The residential school program ended in 1972 across the country.
The last school that WAS a residential school closed in 1996. It was not a residential school in 1996. It was just a federally operated school system, but was not run by Anglican rules of cultural oppressions. Which is a common Misconception
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u/1dererLives Feb 07 '23
The one that closed on 1996 was "technically" a res school, but was in fact run entirely by Indigenous persons.
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u/please_trade_marner Feb 07 '23
See, this is what happens when nuance is no longer allowed in the conversation. People have an exaggerated understanding of what actually happened.
Those schools in 1996 would have been run by the first nations people themselves. The teachers would have been mostly first nation. And anybody going to them went there voluntarily. In fact, all students who went to residential schools post 1951 went there voluntarily and could leave whenever they wanted.
The vast majority of the horror stories you hear about did occur 100-150 years ago.
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u/Zenkakau Feb 07 '23
I know people with horror stories of those schools so it was still happening less than a hundred years ago.
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u/OakBayIsANecropolis Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Gordon's Indian Residential School was run by the federal government until 1996. A teacher was convicted of sexually assaulting a student there in 1988. The school administrator who retired in 1984 was convicted of 10 charges of sexual assault.
Kivalliq Hall was run by the federal government until 1995. St Mary's school on the Blood Reserve was run by the federal government until 1988.
Students who attended these schools only in their very last year are still eligible for residential school survivor benefits.
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u/shointelpro Feb 07 '23
I'm not sure you understand the word "voluntary" in a system of coerced assimilation. That's only a small problem with what you said.
Next you'll be telling us the 60s scoop was voluntary, and only in the 1860s at that.
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u/dennison Feb 07 '23
Serious question - why would any person / government/ society do this in the modern world?
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u/SulfuricDonut Feb 07 '23
Claimed reasons:
"These people are impoverished and non-contributing because they haven't been given education required to participate in the modern economy. Their local governments are unwilling to participate in our proper education system therefore we have to enforce it."
Actual reasons:
"These people have a different culture which is hostile and inconvenient, and we need to get rid of it. We can't get rid of the people, but we can make sure that the next generation is less hostile by educating them on how much better life is in our preferred culture and making sure they don't feel as emotionally attached to their own."
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u/LoLModsAreCancer Feb 07 '23
China is occupying Tibet because the land is an important water source. The people are an inconvenience, so they slowly remove them.
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u/feeltheslipstream Feb 08 '23
Because its the most effective way to unify a country.
Less fights to put down when no one's fighting each other. Countries can focus on "us vs them" instead of "some of us vs some of us"
The reason has never changed, modern or centuries ago. All that's happened is countries that completed the process long ago are now sitting on their high horse going "I don't know why they're doing this. Why can't they be like us and all agree with each other".
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u/richEC Feb 07 '23
The last mandatory enrollment for Residential Schools in Canada was in 1947. They were run by the Bands after 1970.
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u/peregrinkm Feb 07 '23
Theyāre not just doing it to the Tibetans. Itās happening all over the provincial regions
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u/SuspiciousRule3120 Feb 07 '23
Heard in China "if you ain't Han, you be gone"
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u/harder_said_hodor Feb 07 '23
Actually, people really don't give much of a shit there and everyone tends to be quite proud of the 52/54 ethnicities (can't remember which one they use) and how they live "harmoniously". Would say I saw a fair bit of anti Uyghur feeling when I was there, similar to how Europeans feel about Romani, but the rest of the ethnicities were generally loved for the internal diversity they brought. Lived in a city with a relatively big Islamic Chinese (non Uyghur) population and never encountered any ethnic racism towards them in the 10 years I was there
Average Zhou has no idea what's happening in Tibet, only that it is now more tourist friendly
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u/SaffellBot Feb 07 '23
similar to how Europeans feel about Romani
Seems like you're really downplaying that racism and bigotry as well. If it's similar to how Europeans feel about Romani it's absolutely fucking vile ongoing bigotry that causes active harm every day.
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u/SuperGenius98K Feb 07 '23
Same headline every year for 50 years and counting.
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u/Old_Snow3086 Feb 07 '23
Whenever people say they would have stopped the Holocaust, I doubt them. What are they doing to stop the current genocides China and other nations are carrying out?
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u/Grand-Daoist Feb 08 '23
exactly look up the Rohingya genocide or the horrific discrimination against Pgymy people in Central Africa
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u/neutrilreddit Feb 07 '23
Not true, if you're referring to these boarding schools, as the article expresses.
This is an extremely recent development under Xi.
2008 following the infamous Lhasa riots was probably where the government began actively pivoting itself against Tibet to an abrupt degree, but Xi has been taking things up a notch.
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u/geophilo Feb 07 '23
Pure fucking evil.
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u/LegoClaes Feb 07 '23
The sheer amount of separated kids is staggering. It equates to separating every single Danish kid under 18 from their family.
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u/myassholealt Feb 07 '23
As others have said already, this sounds a lot like it parallels the treatment of groups all over the globe. Which, as I'm getting older and more cynical, is an argument supporting the idea that humans are inherently evil, and it takes work and effort to be good. And a lot of people are not interested in doing that work.
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u/CartersPlain Feb 07 '23
It can mostly be explained by the concept of in-groups and out-groups IMO.
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u/Gitlez Feb 07 '23
Although I agree that there are many evil people, more than anyone wants to admit to, I am not convinced yet that we are inherently evil. I don't dismiss the idea either, as it has a lot of merit, just that I am not entirely convinced yet.
A quote that I keep close is:
ā10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.ā ā Susan Sontag
I agree, it takes work, and I dislike that I know I am in the 80, but I try to be the good 10.
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u/MonochromaticPrism Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
The problem is the majority of humanity is lazy. Not in the physical immediate way most people think of laziness, they will regularly work hard to survive, but it is extremely rare for them to work hard or take on burdens BEYOND what they understand to be the necessary minimum.
The fundamental skills that have to be developed to be good are all painful and high effort. Empathy requires taking on the simulated pain of others and putting additional effort into understanding the world around yourself. Mercy requires denying yourself the emotional satisfaction of vengeance, petty or otherwise, and is a vital prerequisite to the true pursuit of justice. Another prerequisite of justice is the love of truth, a passion which not only has a high mental effort and time requirement, but also involves taking on a lot of pain as you begin to see the constant violation of truth and its terrible cost.
On top of this people start selfish. I mean this literally, young children are overwhelmingly focused on their own experience of life. Itās why empathy is considered a learned trait.
This means that you have to grow from a self focused natural state and choose to take on many kinds of pain and extra effort which donāt directly correlate to acquiring food or shelter or even a mate (since having minimum quantities of the prior two is generally more than sufficient when paired with both partners sex drives).
This is the central requirement to shift the majority of people to good, that people willingly choose to take on pain and effort in order to realize that more pain and effort is needed, instead of choosing blissful ignorance and easy selfishness.
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u/king_27 Feb 07 '23
I don't think humans are inherently evil, were cooperative and social animals by nature. That being said, once we tipped the natural balance and started our agrarian lifestyles and gathering property, suddenly survival of the fittest sways into the hands of those with the biggest weapons and willing to commit the most violence. We are descendents of the most violent humans because the meek ones get killed first.
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u/RegularWhiteShark Feb 07 '23
I think a lot of it is that people who should be in power donāt have the desire for power that the scummy bastards have. So we get scum leading us.
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u/congradulations Feb 07 '23
Sometimes the Big Baddies are just those who accomplish evil more effectively. The Nazis got very good at state-sactioned extermination, scammers are so endemic because they work so well, human trafficking have it down to a science... the CCP has gotten good at repression and self-preservation
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u/Majormlgnoob Feb 07 '23
It takes more work to destroy people's cultures than it does to let them be
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u/Lusty_Knave Feb 07 '23
Tibetan here just to say that this is very different from the boarding schools that the Dali Lama opened in Dharamshala for refugees escaping the cultural revolution and certain death under Chinese rule. My dad lived in a boarding school and never knew his parents because they had to become laborers in Himachal Pradesh and neighboring areas to support themselves as the government in exile could not save everyone economically. My dadās parents did road work, and the last thing my dad heard about his dad was that his arm was crushed by a boulder during āconstructionā - roadwork in the mountainous area of the Himalayas is one of the most dangerous occupations; entire work crews vanish in a blink of an eye because of landslides.
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u/uoco Feb 07 '23
Just to be clear, your dad's parents were in a boarding school under the tibetan government in exile and not in china?
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u/Lusty_Knave Feb 08 '23
Correct. My dad is very reserved about his memories from India - he was actually the youngest (a baby wrapped on his parents back) when his entire village left together in the night to embark on a chilling journey through the Himalayas towards the exiled government in India, which he recalls lasting years on foot. He remembers spending time in a smaller Himalayan country, I think Nepal, for a while. His sister who he barely remembers due to his young age, died from the harsh conditions of the journey through the Himalayas. Iām a 28 years old first generation and I plan on returning to India to visit/meet a lot of my relatives for the first time in the next couple years, and I plan on documenting this and learning a lot more about my families story.
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u/Wewoo3 Feb 08 '23
Wow, thank you for sharing what your father remembers. Those are difficult conversations to have let alone watching your parents recall those memories, you see a different side of them. Document whatever you can. I wish I had done that visiting my parents home towns in Mexico.
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u/Dorkseidis Feb 07 '23
That would be China committing genocide again I see
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u/TheRavenSayeth Feb 07 '23
I was just thinking today how the uyghurs are in literal concentration camps but we're worried about balloons.
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u/Abir_Vandergriff Feb 07 '23
We can and should be concerned about both things.
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u/Individual_Client175 Feb 08 '23
The US can't just match into China and start a war to solve that problem.
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u/Destinlegends Feb 07 '23
I can speak as a Canadian.. you donāt want to do this. It will not turn out well for anyone.
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Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
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u/Lord_of_Wills Feb 07 '23
The actual reason is having a homogeneous culture makes it easier to manipulate your population, in theory at least
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u/shapeofgiantape Feb 07 '23
Especially if what that culture is is defined by the government in the first place
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u/Pancurio Feb 08 '23
If cultural homogeneity is so important to the Chinese state then the Chinese state should restrict itself to culturally Chinese regions.
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u/WinterWindWhip Feb 07 '23
I can't help but wonder how many of those kids are special needs and what hell they must be going through not being able to find their mom. It's unimaginable horror.
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u/mackd0nald Feb 07 '23
As a parent to a special needs child, I cannot imagine.
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u/liberated_u Feb 07 '23
It is pure evil. I can not even bare to imagine this happening to my family. As a parent to a wonderful special child, the horror she would suffer in a situation like this makes me feel literally physically nauseous.
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u/BatteryAcid67 Feb 07 '23
Free Tibet
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u/mojojojomu Feb 07 '23
Free all Uyghurs as well
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u/Sith__Pureblood Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
And the Inner Mongolians, and the Manchurians, and Hong Kong/ Macau. And stop harassing Taiwan and committing neo-colonialism in Africa/ South Asia!
*edit
Tankies seething, lmao
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u/CookieKeeperN2 Feb 08 '23
I had to do a double take because they said the Manchurians. I lost it at Macau.
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u/ciash1ll Feb 08 '23
Most Americans think their government doesn't use propaganda, and it's only reserved for the "bad countries" like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Their government has lied to them countless times, and they still fall for it.
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u/burger-lettuce16 Feb 08 '23
Agreed, the mask slipped at āFree hong kong/ Macauā when combined with āStop committing neo-colonialism in Africa/Asia!ā
Edit: formatting
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u/ShitTalkingAlt980 Feb 08 '23
Lmao ok to Africa. Anyway another JSOC guy has died in Mali. Another JSOC dude was killed in Somali. Another car bomb goes off in Nigeria with US fingerprints on it. Oh it just so happened that the Arab Spring destabilized all of our long term enemies in Northern Africa and an unpopular with US officials President of an allied country.
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u/sanemartigan Feb 07 '23
Frankly, Free the Han too. The government is the problem. It's not like the majority of mainland Han have enviable lives.
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u/CheifTwit
Feb 07 '23
edited Feb 07 '23
•
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.
It would be nice if they did some math and accounting for how rural and underpopulated Tibet is. Tibet is one of the lowest population density places in the world and the population mostly work in husbandry so are well spread out. Eastern China is one the highest population density places in the world.
Local schools just don't make sense for 90% of the population unless they live in a few hi-density clusters (lhasa, shigatse. naqqu, etc).
The choices are... 1. Boarding school where you learn with 30 students of your own age and 7-10 qualified teachers on each subject. 2. Local school where a single jack of all trades, master of none teaches 8 students from ages of 11 to 17.
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u/m4nu Feb 07 '23
Glad to see this. It's just more cost efficient to build one large school in an urban area to serve a few hundred square km area and have students stay on campus than a bunch of tiny schools spread across dozens of villages. I worked in one in Henan for a year and our students were 99% Han - and it was a state run public school with mandatory attendance for all those students. About 30% of our students didn't use the boarding facilities because they lived in the city, but those coming from the larger district and farming county did as a matter of convenience - who was a 2 hour commute to school each day, one way? School hours for these students also tend to be 700-2100 even in day schools because of the rigorous education culture. At that point may as well provide a bed.
Xinjiang and Tibet tend to be poor and rural so this strategy is also used there. What are you going to do? Not teach them Chinese so they're stuck in economic marginalized areas? You can pay huge amounts of money to decentralize education and maintain quality but that doesn't seem like a priority.
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Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23 •
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u/frozen_glycerin Feb 08 '23
I wonder what the retention rate of Tibetan is vs. a non Mandarin variety of Chinese would be. Language leveling is happening all over China (and the world), so I'm sure Tibetan is hardly the only thing affected by this.
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Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/frozen_glycerin Feb 08 '23
But Tibetan at least has a written standard and some media available in it. Most random "dialects" (though most people don't realize they're as different as French is from Spanish, if not more) do not have any standard or any consumable written media in it.
This isn't unique to China either. Taiwan is having the same issues with its languages, both Chinese and not.
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u/wastedcleverusername Feb 08 '23
Tibetan language proficiency is higher among Tibetans in China than those who reside in India. The population has steadily increased and by just about every human development metric that exists, life has been getting better, so if "cultural genocide" as some accuse is the goal, they're doing an exceedingly poor job of it.
The model for what's happening is less "Native American kids forcibly separated by those who considered them savages with the explicit goal of 'civilizing' them and suppressing their culture" and more "Occitanian kids forced to learn so they can fully participate in the economy and civic life of the nation". There isn't a single European nation that didn't go through this nation-building process in the 18-19th century but nobody ever wants acknowledge the diversity that was smoothed over to get to where they are today. That Reddit immediately jumps to the worst possible interpretation is more projection than anything else.
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u/Guaymaster Feb 07 '23
Iirc there are more Welsh speakers in Argentina than in Wales. Not sure how true that is anymore though, but there are some kickass tea houses in Chubut.
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u/Malodorous_Camel Feb 07 '23
Look at the number of people in Wales and Ireland who, despite being part of language revival efforts, don't show great interest in actually trying to learn their own language.
Contrary to popular opinion, it was the welsh themselves who implemented the grim pro-english schooling practices that saw kids beaten for using welsh (in the 19th/20th century)
I'd always assumed it was english oppression, so it felt good to have that revealed.
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u/alokui32 Feb 08 '23
Tbf i think the argument can be made that it was still English oppression.
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u/kdestroyer1 Feb 08 '23
Popping in to say this is also true for many young Indians and regional languages+Sanskrit. Mostly all of us know how to speak our regional/native tongue but most of us can't write or read in it because Hindi and English is just much more useful in many places. The older generation does write and read native languages though, but the importance has decreased by a lot.
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u/Candid_Friend Feb 07 '23
Local schools just don't make sense for 90% of the population unless they live in a few hi-density clusters (lhasa, shigatse. naqqu, etc).
Finally found a reasonable comment in Reddit that doesn't just regurgitate so mindlessly and happily in their moral outrage.
I guess people who feel particular about a situation, should at least try to educate themselves a little about the context of the situation. Imagine that.
I also imagine Reddit's brilliant solution is that they should also just pen all Tibetans into densely packed and isolated reservations with little economic opportunity compounded by domestic, alcohol, and drug abuse while their people are still seen as 2nd/3rd class citizens on their former own land.
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u/PubeSmoker69 Feb 07 '23
Scchhhh. Dont you know this is reddit? China is evil commie-nazis and loves to commit genocides
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u/Eukelek Feb 07 '23
destroying cultures will only make them poor and miserable in the long run...
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u/RevolutionarySoil11 Feb 07 '23
They're now going for full eradication of Tibetan and Uyghur identity so there will be no 'them' left.
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u/Fr0me Feb 07 '23
Whats the goal for the CCP wiping out these cultures and people? Why do they want to do it so bad? Whats their end game? Did these people (tibetians and uyghurs) do anything even remotely close that would make china think they deserved it?
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u/senegal98 Feb 07 '23
Killing dissent.
It's easier to make people comply if they have no identity of their own.
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u/ElRamenKnight Feb 07 '23
Whats the goal for the CCP wiping out these cultures and people? Why do they want to do it so bad? Whats their end game? Did these people (tibetians and uyghurs) do anything even remotely close that would make china think they deserved it?
They saw what happened to the USSR and prior empires that balkanized and want to prevent history's repeat.
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u/cyberpunk-future Feb 08 '23
They saw what happened to the USSR and prior empires that balkanized and want to prevent history's repeat.
Ah, someone who gets it. It's all about ensuring future stability. Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
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u/BoltgunOnHisHip Feb 07 '23
What they're worried about is the tendency for China, historically, to fragment on cultural lines in times of crisis. See the Warlord Era prior to WWII, or the Three Kingdoms period. If everybody is Han, then China will be united forever...at least, that's the theory.
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u/poktanju Feb 07 '23
Your examples of fragmentation were within what we would now consider the Han people.
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u/DCF10 Feb 07 '23
They know and donāt care. Easier to exploit in foxconn factories.
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Feb 07 '23
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/Gluca23 Feb 07 '23
We are all guilty to do business with them, and buy made in china when convenient.
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u/CometAzur42069 Feb 07 '23
While there is no doubt an added benefit of cultural assimilation, boarding schools are pretty common throughout China especially rural remote regions. Parents do not live in a suburb lifestyle of a 9-5 to take their kid to school everyday. There is no bus. No carpool.
In fact some of the parents are even away from home.
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u/t3ripley Feb 08 '23
Shhh donāt say anything reasonable, China bad remember?
And certainly donāt mention how before Chinaās involvement Tibet was a feudal state with brutal corporal punishment and slavery an everyday occurrence. The serfs of Tibet were not people, they were property to be owned and abused by the ruling class.
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u/camynnad Feb 07 '23
Murder follows. Look at native boarding schools in the US and Canada for proof.
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u/a_sense_of_contrast Feb 07 '23
Seems like the Chinese government is taking the historical Canadian approach to cultural genocide.
Very sad.
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u/Crizbibble Feb 07 '23
Canada did it, the US did it, Aussieās did it. Not too sure about the Kiwiās though.
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u/Fzrit Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
Not too sure about the Kiwiās though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_schools
Although children were to be encouraged to speak English, there was no official policy banning children from speaking Te Reo MÄori. However some native school committees made rules banning this, and MÄori children were sometimes physically punished for speaking their native tongue at school. This practice, which persisted for decades after the act was introduced in the mid 19th century, contributed to the massive decline in Te Reo MÄori.
There was an unofficial attempt to slowly eradicate the native language, and it's the reason why most Maori people today can't speak/read/etc their own native language. However in recent times the government has taken tons of steps to reverse things and try to revive it. But the damage is done and there's not really any need for anyone to know Maori anymore. Eventually it'll go extinct on it's own as a matter of practicality, and be relegated to Maori ritualistic things like Haka/prayers/etc.
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u/fifteencat Feb 08 '23
The fact that China teaches Tibetans Mandarin is not a reason to believe they are trying to wipe out Tibetan culture. This is the same claim that has been made about the Uyghurs for years now. In response to a significant terrorist problem China compelled Uyghurs that were identified as extremist to learn Mandarin and vocation skills so they could assimilate to society and not be attracted to terrorism. A brilliant strategy that worked amazingly. They haven't had a terrorist incident in years after dealing with routine terrorist acts for decades. They had problems, they had issues, but by and large it was successful. They decided not to pursue the Israeli approach of just barricading people into an area and impoverishing them. That hasn't worked so well in Palestine. But the west screams that they are committing genocide. Even though Uyghur script is everywhere in Xinjiang. On road signs, in the schools.
Here's a series of videos of a westerner who currently lives in China visiting Tibet. I see the road signs have Tibetan script. Why? Is this how you commit genocide?
Here's an alternate understanding of world events. The US is threatened by Chinese economic development. The empire cannot allow rivals. So a typical pattern of regime change and destabilization has commenced. Key leaders of Hong Kong's protest were trained in the west. Uyghur separatists were trained along side ISIS with US support. They were sent back to China. The US has ringed China with military bases and is trying to militarize Taiwan. Thinly based allegations of genocide are being levied. This is a familiar pattern that needs to be considered when we hear allegations like this. And yes the US does influence UN bodies as well.
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u/Elucidate137 Feb 08 '23
took long enough to find a single reasonable comment under this post. it is remarkable the extent to which propaganda is swallowed and eaten up by westerners. warmongering is hardly even hidden
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u/fifteencat Feb 08 '23
Honestly I'm amazed that I got a couple of positive comments like yours. Normally anything that I write that reflects positively on China here is downvoted hard.
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u/Ecstatic-Argument-20 Feb 08 '23
We've known this for years and the media still likes to act like it's new and shocking information, yet they still sit idely by with their funds and influence. China has literal fucking internment camps and still no one with any power at all does anything
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u/Squeeshytoes Feb 07 '23
Whyyyy are countries still doing this?! Why the fuck cant people just fucking live?!?!
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u/huangw15 Feb 08 '23
Honestly, because it's a historically proven winner. You forcefully assimilate and settle a region, give it a few generations, and now no one is realistically going to say kick them all out. If you're feeling generous, you can then even apologize for it and treat it like a historical shame, whilst really paying no price at all. The land is already taken, the resources already had, and the economic benefits already gotten. Then after a century you can make memes on reddit about "hey XXX, where are your natives?".
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u/Mammoth_Actuary_3933 Feb 07 '23
Is this bad? Does Tibet have the infrastructure and resources to educate their kids to be able to compete with people from Shanghai or Beijing for jobs? Seems like it's the responsibility of the government to ensure kids are getting adequate education.
They can't say Tibet is part of China, but then not educate them to the same level as other places.
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u/Low_M_H Feb 08 '23
Funny thing is that in tweeter, UN Special Procedure used a picture of Tibetan student using Tibetan language text book in their class. The tweeter link is here.
By the way, boarding schools are not uncommon in the majority rural part of China especially the west side. Han Chinese in other rural areas also attended boarding school. Main reason is that there is a compulsory education law in China for all Han and Non Han Chinese children and the nearest school are too far. So these student usually stay in schools and only return home during holidays (I am not sure on returning home on weekends).
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u/PandaCheese2016 Feb 07 '23
Children of the Tibetan minority are forced to complete a ācompulsory educationā curriculum in Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) without access to traditional or culturally relevant learning. The Putonghua language governmental schools do not provide a substantive study of Tibetan minorityās language, history and culture.
I gotta ask, do primary or secondary educations in say America involve āsubstantiveā culture studies based on studentsā ethnicity? Given that many states are banning CRT, what would such programs look like?
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u/False_Creek Feb 08 '23
For context, by my calculations, the total number of Tibetan children in China is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 million.
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u/KamenAkuma Feb 08 '23
Currently this is happening in multiple places around the world. Even in Europe, Russia is taking thousands of orphaned or displaced kids and sending them to Russian boarding schools
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u/Final-Evening-9606 Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
ā1 millionā - 1 in 6 Tibetan is a minor?
āForcibly placedā - education until K12 is mandatory
āState-runā - arenāt most public schools like that?
āBoarding schoolā - common for low population density places, mainly rural areas in all of Chinaā¦
How much more sensationalist can you get?
China bad gib updoots pls
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u/Blue1234567891234567 Feb 08 '23
Based on a quick google search, thatās a fucking third of the population of Tibet
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u/red_purple_red Feb 07 '23
Last time I checked making school compulsory for children was a good thing.
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u/Villain_of_Brandon Feb 07 '23
As a Canadian, this sounds like Residential Schools, and that is one of our most shameful moments in history.