Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Sikyong, thank you for attending our parliamentary committee today.
You referenced in earlier testimony the plight of and indeed the similarities to the Muslim Uighurs in China. I wonder if you could comment on the following information that I have read recently. A Reuters article from September 22, 2002, stated:
China is pushing growing numbers of Tibetan rural laborers off the land and into recently built military-style training centers where they are turned into factory workers, mirroring a program in the western Xinjiang region that rights groups have branded coercive labor.
The article states that “Beijing has set quotas for the mass transfer of rural laborers” and estimates that over a half a million people are involved in those transfers.
I would also like your comment on a recent report from December 2021 indicating that the Tibet Action Institute has looked at the “colonial boarding schools” run by China and is conservatively estimating that at least 800,000 Tibetan children are now housed in these state-run institutions and are being forcibly separated from their families with the goal, obviously—as you also mentioned earlier in your testimony—to deny them their culture, their religion, their language and, indeed, their families.
Taken together, I wonder if you could comment on these policies and what they mean to you and your people.