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.