Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 8th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 21 of the House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to the motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, and the motion adopted by the Standing Subcommittee on International Human Rights on Monday, May 25, 2026, the subcommittee is meeting for a briefing on the situation of Tibetan children placed in schools administered by the People's Republic of China.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before you speak. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation—floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses.

We have Chemi Lhamo, Tibetan Canadian human rights activist, appearing as an individual.

From the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, we have Tencho Gyatso, president, by video conference.

From the Tibet Action Institute, we have Dr. Gyal Lo, Tibet specialist and educational sociologist, and Lhadon Tethong, co-founder and director.

From Tibet Watch, we have Tenzin Choekyi, senior researcher, by video conference.

Welcome to you all. Each of you will have five minutes for an introduction.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Chair, I have a couple of things to say.

First, are we going to be okay with the time because the votes took longer to complete? Do we still have all the time we wanted?

Second, I think Ms. Lhamo is going to speak last and not first. We had made a small change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Yes.

I would like to start with Madam Gyatso.

You have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Tencho Gyatso, President, International Campaign for Tibet (Washington)]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and esteemed committee members, I would like to begin by recognizing the leadership already shown by the Canadian Parliament and this committee in particular on the Tibetan cause. Thank you for using your voice to stand with the Dalai Lama, with Tibet and with Tibet's children. Thank you also for inviting me to speak on the alarming situation of Tibetan children placed in boarding schools and preschool institutions administered by the PRC government.

Both Canada and the United States have called for sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the boarding school system in Tibet. Germany and numerous other governments and parliaments have also called for an end to this forced assimilation of Tibetan children. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called for an end to the boarding schools in its third periodic review of China, but China continues to accelerate its efforts.

On July 1, just days before His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 91st birthday, Beijing will bring into force the so-called ethnic unity and progress law. This new law makes the state's ambitions unmistakably clear, laying a stark blueprint for the erasure of Tibetan language, culture and identity. Several provisions in this outrageous law are deeply concerning.

Article 15 says the state shall promote written and spoken Chinese and, even if a non-Chinese language is to be used, the state should give priority to the national standard of spoken and written Chinese language and script. Thus, Tibetan is placed in a subordinate position. The law permits cultural expression only when it serves party ideology. It pushes faith, speech and identity to the margins whenever they diverge from the state's approved narrative.

These measures arrive at a moment when Beijing is coercing nearly one million Tibetan children, roughly four out of every five Tibetan children between the ages of six and 18, into state-run boarding schools. For Tibetan children, childhood is spent not in the company of parents and grandparents but in institutions designed to reshape how they speak, what they believe and ultimately who they are.

Recently released images by the United Front Work Department from the southern Tibetan town of Tsona, close to the Indian border, reveal some disturbing scenes of indoctrination. Tibetan kindergarten children, likely under the age of six years old, are dressed in military camouflage uniforms marching under the Chinese flag and participating in simulated combat exercises. These children appear to be carrying imitation rifles as part of what is described as national defence- and ethnic unity-themed educational activities.

These state-run boarding schools are part of a much broader system that has also swept hundreds of thousands of adults into what UN experts have described as large-scale coercive labour programs. This system exists within a wider framework of fear and intimidation characterized by severe restrictions on freedom of expression, religion, movement and cultural practice.

I also find it deeply alarming that Tibetan children are barred from monasteries and other places of worship. Even traditional festivals and religious observations are curtailed.

This new law's reach extends even beyond China's borders, creating a legal framework through which criticism that is voiced in Ottawa, in Washington, D.C., Geneva or any other place, could be portrayed as and punished for undermining ethnic unity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Please try to finish in a few more seconds.

[Tencho Gyatso]

All right.

On July 1, this framework enters into force. On this, I want to add context.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says Tibetan culture has much to contribute to the benefit of humanity, and this Dalai Lama is the embodiment of this culture. He works tirelessly, championing a framework for teaching compassion, ethical discernment and inner resilience. He calls it “inner disarmament”. He says world peace must come from inner disarmament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you. We've exceeded the time by 20 seconds.

I appeal to every one of you to respect the time, please, because we are short of time.

I would like to invite Dr. Gyal Lo or Lhadon Tethong to take the floor for two minutes, please.

[Lhadon Tethong, Co-Founder and Director, Tibet Action Institute]

Thank you, Chair.

Almost five years ago, we released our first report on residential boarding schools in Tibet, showing that schooling in Tibet today is mostly residential, with approximately one million Tibetan children—at least 78% of students—living separated from their parents and families in the state-run boarding system.

What we didn't know with any certainty, due to China's near-total information blackout on Tibet, were the actual conditions in the schools. Sadly, our second report reveals new evidence of children facing serious abuse and neglect and loss of language to the extent that one person describes Tibetan children in his area as “like kids raised in a foreign country”. Parents unable to parent or protect their children are prevented from helping them when they're sick, are unable to intervene to stop abuse and are not even allowed to decide what they can do when they're home on vacation. As well, children are experiencing alienation that is leading to deep psychological and emotional harm.

Recently, we received an account from a former student that speaks to the extent of both routine abuse and extreme violence that children in the schools face. A monk until his parents were forced to send him to boarding school describes how difficult it was to be away from home, especially in grades 1 and 2, and constantly missing his parents' home and having to be responsible for everything on his own.

He said, “When it came to bullying and punishment, the environment was quite severe. Injuries such as broken hands, fractured fingers, and bruised backs were common. Over time students began to normalize this treatment and rarely told their parents. It was so widespread that no single incident stands out—there were simply too many.”

Eventually this child and several others tried to escape from the boarding school and return to the monastery, but they were caught by police, taken to a police station, beaten and tortured with an electric device before being returned to the boarding school.

Our report highlights many other cases of abuse, including children being beaten for wearing Buddhist protection cords around their necks; for saying prayers; and children becoming deaf after being hit too many times on their ears and their heads. Also, we've documented multiple cases of suicide, attempted suicide and death because of abuse and neglect.

The Canadian former UN special rapporteur on minority issues called this system of schooling “an existential threat for Tibetans” and said that he is not afraid to use the words “cultural genocide”.

He said, “I want to emphasize this is massive...massive [not just] in scale, but massive in terms of the grave violations of the human rights of children and their families, and the individuals involved, to a scale which is actually almost inconceivable....”

Canada should investigate sanctions and put visa restrictions on Chinese officials who are designing or implementing these policies that are intended to erase Tibetan identity and also on the authorities at the schools where physical abuse and negligence are known to be taking place. With China's upcoming review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Canada needs to work with like-minded governments to increase pressure on Beijing to abolish the colonial boarding school system and to guarantee access to culturally and linguistically appropriate education for Tibetan children while they live at home.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

The time was very well respected.

I would like to invite Mr. Gyal Lo to take the floor for two minutes, please.

[Gyal Lo, Tibet Specialist and Educational Sociologist, Tibet Action Institute]

Thank you, Chair.

Today I plan to give follow-up testimony on what is happening to Tibetan children through China's colonial boarding schools in Tibet.

In 2016 my two grandnieces were sent to a colonial boarding preschool. After three months, they both became strangers at home. Let me share my personal experience with those two grandnieces.

One year before, when I was visiting my home, those two kids jumped on me without hesitation. But in late November 2016, after just three months, my brother asked me to come home and check on the cause of the change in my two grandnieces. I went to the school gate to pick them up. The first time they gave me eye contact, but then there was no more emotional exchange. When I took them home, they did not exchange any emotion with their grandparents or parents. During dinner time, they were silent. They kept their distance from family members. It seemed they had not already lost their ability to engage in conversation with their family members, but at the same time, they seemed uncomfortable. They were starting to feel uncomfortable sharing the same identity with their parents and family members.

That's where I see serious change. One, the lost language means the cultural genocide starts with them, from home. The second part is the racial genocide. I can see that it's not physical but cultural. They start rejecting or hesitating to share a common identity with family members.

After 10 years, the kids who have been in boarding schools in Tibet start criticizing their family members who are not able to speak Chinese Mandarin. That's a serious shift in a generation, because those boarding school policies are implemented across Tibet as part of a compulsory education.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Is it possible to wrap it up, please? We've exceeded the time. You can go for a few more seconds.

[Gyal Lo]

Okay.

Since last year, schools have had preschoolers spying on their parents: Who emphasizes the mother tongue when you come home from boarding school? The kids report to the school, which then communicates with the local government. The local government then puts political pressure on their parents. That's how they circulate the pressure—by cutting off the language of the home between the children and their parents.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to invite Ms. Tenzin Choekyi to take the floor for five minutes.

The floor is yours.

[Tenzin Choekyi, Senior Researcher, Tibet Watch]

Thank you to the committee for their renewed attention on Tibet.

Three years ago at this hearing, I described the suppression of Tibetan language worsening since 2021, with the ban on informal Tibetan language classes and closure of Tibetan-led schools, the replacement of Tibetan textbooks with Chinese, the detention of teachers and students, and the promotion of Putonghua, or standardized Mandarin Chinese, in preschool kindergartens.

Today, the situation has deteriorated significantly into accelerated legalized assimilation to create China's Tibetans in a Chinese nation, or Zhonghua minzu. As of March this year, these pre-existing practices are protected under the law on promoting ethnic unity and progress.

Since the last hearing, one of the most alarming precedents was the ban on even optional Tibetan language classes. In Kardze prefecture, a secret notification issued in September 2023 banned Tibetan language classes in all middle to high secondary schools. Teachers and students were warned that sharing this information would result in punishment.

This systemic erasure of language, or linguicide, now extends to universities.

Refugees reported to us at Tibet Watch that from 2023 onwards, plans were under way to abolish the separate status of Tibetan studies departments in several universities. The plan is to merge five ethnic groups—Han, Yi, Tibetan, Uyghurs and Mongolians—in a single department with all instruction conducted in Chinese, and students required to sit for exams and submit their theses in Chinese.

A refugee told us that both teachers and students must prepare for it.

Another one said that now it's over; all exams and final theses must now be written in Chinese, leaving no space whatsoever for the Tibetan language.

A third refugee told us that in late 2020, in Dzorge county, nearly 80 young monks were locked up for two months in an empty classroom for “thought transformation”, with no teaching or family contact. After that ordeal, many quit being monks. Some of them told that refugee that it was impossible to stay a monk.

In some areas of Tibet, children are barred from even entering religious institutions. Those who can are children recognized as tulku, or reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist leaders, but they are also groomed with party ideology and education in the Chinese language for political indoctrination.

Some children have suffered more and are also the strongest: children of jailed protesters, children of those who burned alive in self-immolation protests, children of displaced farmers and nomads, child witnesses to police killings and a seven-year-old boy we interviewed who was slapped, beaten and jailed for over seven months for trying to escape to India.

Those are children whose innocence, whose need for love and compassion, was robbed by the Chinese state after the 2008 Tibetan uprising in Tibet. We cannot forget their childhood, even if they are now adults. The Tibet they have seen forcibly transformed leaves no space for their memory, not even for the language their names belong to.

In 2024, after one of the last remaining Tibetan-led schools was forcibly shut on graduation day, the school founder urged against despair and advised to pray for a better fortune for education in the next life. Geshe Jigme Gyaltsen wrote online that “Impermanence is indeed impermanence”, and requested everyone to continue shouldering their own responsibilities. That a school founder's final words offered rebirth as the only path forward tells us what has been lost in this lifetime for an entire generation in Tibet.

In July this year, the ethnic unity law takes effect, but Canada can take action against it. This committee can honour the Tibetan language against China's linguicide in its education system.

I urge all members of this committee to support a motion honouring April 30 as Tibetan language day. Government recognition now carries urgent significance for the Tibetan written language that unites Tibetans as a distinct people. It was originally initiated in Tibet in 2017 as Tibetan calligraphy day—a date chosen to reflect the four vowels and thirty letters in Tibetan.

Members of the Tibetan refugee community here in Canada call Canada their second home.

Recognizing the Tibetan language affirms its value as part of Canada's cultural diversity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Can you wrap it up, please? The time is up.

[Tenzin Choekyi]

By honouring this day, Canada would stand with strength and dignity alongside the Tibetan people, even after over seven decades of Chinese colonization.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Now, I would like to invite Ms. Chemi Lhamo to take the floor for five minutes.

[Chemi Lhamo, Tibetan-Canadian Human Rights Activist, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair.

Picture a six-year-old—a child in grade 1 or maybe even in kindergarten. Now imagine that very young child living in a boarding school, going through a shockingly rigorous 12-hour schedule day after day, separated from their parents and family, having to study in a completely foreign language and often facing extreme abuse.

This six-year-old may get to go home on the weekends, but cannot go to any houses of worship nor speak their own language—their own mother tongue—even to their parents. Any engagement in religious practice is not allowed, and when they return to school, they're asked to tell the teachers if the parents are breaking the rules.

This is the reality of a six-year-old child inside Tibet. Tibetan parents have no choice but to send their children to these residential boarding schools. If they refuse, they will be harassed, threatened and face imprisonment.

Now, I'll go to the reality here in Canada.

The Chinese government has passed a law that openly declares a war on anyone who is not Chinese and tries to maintain their distinct identity. At the same time, the Chinese government has stolen approximately one million Tibetan children from their families and placed them in these boarding schools, where they're facing severe political indoctrination, and physical and psychological abuse and neglect.

Yet, the Government of Canada has back-seated the issue of human rights in the recent dealings with the PRC, namely with the Prime Minister's visit to China and the Chinese foreign minister's subsequent visit to Canada. It has to be said that this strategy seems short-sighted and flawed.

It is not megaphone diplomacy that we're seeking. It's really a reality check of Xi Jinping's predominant interest, which is really to consolidate and expand control at all costs. That's not a trustworthy trading partner for Canada.

Michael Kovrig explained this quite well in his Foreign Affairs article. By subordinating security and human rights to immediate commercial gain, these governments—Canada and our allies—are exposing their citizens to foreign interference, arbitrary detention and transnational repression with diminishing prospects for recourse. This subordination has very real consequences here in Canada for us, whether it is the experiences of attacks, such as the death threats and rape threats that I received when I was running for student leadership at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, or threats to dissidents like Dr. Gyal Lo, who represents probably the single greatest threat to the CCP and its hidden policies of erasure, which are only now coming to light.

Tibetans know all too well that when we are dealing with the Chinese government, the road of accommodation leads only to further accommodations and further concessions that will be detrimental to our Canadian economy, our own citizens, our institutions, and the most vulnerable and marginalized people suffering under Xi Jinping's rule.

Despite that, Tibetans inside Tibet have defied all odds in their fight to protect all that they hold dear, especially their language, culture and Buddhist traditions. They face the real and devastating consequences for their resistance, yet they do not stop. All they need from us is our moral courage and support in action, now more than ever.

I truly do believe in Canada, which has the responsibility and also the opportunity to pursue a principled, realistic foreign policy approach to China that really balances economic and national security while upholding our own core values. This begins by drawing a red line when it comes to the abuse and incarceration of children in a residential school system designed to erase their language, culture and identity. It's far too similar to our own shameful Canadian residential school system.

The colonial boarding school system inside Tibet must be stopped. I ask this committee, Minister of Foreign Affairs Anand and Prime Minister Carney to use every available parliamentary and foreign policy mechanism available to condemn and oppose these schools. This could begin with the Prime Minister ensuring that China's colonial boarding schools and the new ethnic erasure law are condemned in the upcoming G7 leader statement this month. It could be ensuring that Canada is on record with a report, press release or statement from this very committee, ahead of China's rights of the child review at the UN, calling for the colonial boarding schools to be abolished and for Tibetan children to be able to go to school in their own language and live in their own homes. Otherwise, China won't stop.

That six-year-old child I described earlier, who is forced to sing Chinese nursery rhymes and then cries themself to sleep very softly—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Can you wrap it up please?

[Chemi Lhamo]

They cry themselves softly to sleep because they're afraid that someone will hear them. The children who miss their parents and have no one to explain to them the meaning of their own name, where they were born or who they are as Tibetans, are counting on your action.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you for your introduction.

Now we will go to the round of questions and answers.

I would like to start by inviting Madam Kronis to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much to all of the witnesses who are here today, and those who have joined us virtually, for sharing your experiences, which have been incredibly traumatizing.

I just want to make sure that the people who are watching this here at home understand what we are dealing with.

Ms. Lhamo, are these schools optional?

[Chemi Lhamo]

No.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

At what age does the school start at?

[Chemi Lhamo]

Thanks to Tibet Action Institute's work, and the reports they have done, the first report reported that it was ages from six to 18 onwards. Then the new report, in which Dr. Gyal Lo has been instrumental in exposing the hidden policies, says children are as young as four and five years old. These are hidden from the international community.