China's Travesty of Human Rights

"Until one has gotten their own affairs in order, they should not seek to criticize others,"

"But Canada’s government, unfortunately, seems convinced that hypocrisy is a virtue."

Chinese Communist newspaper Global Times 

"No Western nations can hold the high moral ground because of the long history of grave human rights violations."

"[Canada had no right criticizing other countries’ human-rights records until it] put its own house in order."

Zhao Manfeng, Party-run People’s Daily

 

"Some Western countries, Canada included, like to preach to other countries about human rights affairs."

"They should review their pasts and correct their own wrongdoings, instead of pointing fingers at others."

Zhang Zhouxiang, government-run China Daily   

 

"We are deeply concerned about the serious human rights violations against the Indigenous people in Canada. Historically, Canada robbed the Indigenous people of the land, killed them and eradicated their culture."

"We call for a thorough and impartial investigation into all cases where crimes were committed against Indigenous people, especially the children."
Jiang Duan, senior official, China's mission to the UN, Geneva

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School where the discovery of the remains of 215 children in a mass grave became world news. China's Communist Party has not been silent about it. Photo by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

It has long been known that from the 19th century forward Canada instituted a series of residential boarding schools for Indigenous children, throughout its provinces. The schools were operated under the aegis of the federal government by religious orders, with the majority of the schools operated by the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. Children were taken from their parents' homes in Indigenous communities to prepare them for life in Western society. The education they received among other things deprived them deliberately of contact with their cultural heritage, their language and customs.

In their place a totally Western culture, language and religion was inculcated, cutting the children adrift from their past, to prepare them for the future as ordinary Canadians accustomed to a life far different than their culture dictated and alienating them from their tribal affiliation, their parents and their aboriginal backgrounds. This program created an Indigenous trauma that has been likened to cultural genocide. Its intention was a reflection of a colonial mindset, but the harm done was incalculable.

About six months ago in Kamloops, British Columbia at the site of a former Indigenous boarding school a number of unmarked graves was discovered, a revelation that shook the country and shocked the international community. These were of children who failed to survive their tenure at the schools, dying of child diseases that ran rampant through society in general at the time and also reflecting children who perished in the attempt to run away from the schools, to return home.

China was one country delighted with the revelations out of a country, one of many in the West that has been citing human rights violations taking place in China, among them the oppressive plight of Tibetans and the Chinese Muslim Uyghurs who have been mass-imprisoned, subjected to 're-education' in barbed-wire-surrounded vast complexes holding hundreds of thousands of people. Subjected to forced sterilization, to slave labour.

 

People protest against China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs, outside Canada’s Parliament buildings in Ottawa, February 22, 2021. Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Now it has been revealed that Tibetan children from age four and up are being separated from their parents to be placed into a huge network of state-operated boarding schools to strip them of their national identity as Tibetans. The purpose of the isolation and separation, is to immerse the children in an atmosphere totally unlike that reflecting their historical culture. Ultimately the goal is to build loyalty to the Communist Party, according to new research.

The Tibet Action Institute drew on official data to estimate that 806,218 Tibetans between the ages of six and 18 currently attend a boarding school – 78 per cent of the 1,039,370 children attending school in Tibetan regions.   Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press

Up to an estimated 900,000 Tibetan children are now enrolled in the school system, forcing children to study in Chinese, not the language of their birth and culture. The children are banned from practising Buddhism, while the school system indoctrinates them, as reported by the advocacy group Tibetan Action Institute, deeply into the strictures of state communism.. 

This situation echoes that of the mass detention and re-education schemes taking place in Xinjiang where over a million Uyghur Muslims have been incarcerated and harnessed into a forced labour program. First-hand testimonials from Tibetans in China form the basis of a 61-page report alleging that three of four Tibetan students have been separated from their families and communities, calling upon the international community to intervene.

"By uprooting Tibetan children from their families and culture and making them live in state-run boarding schools the [Chinese] are using one of the most heinous tools of colonization to attack

Tibetan identity."

"China's unprecedented campaign of forced Sinicization in Tibet targets even the youngest children and demands the urgent intervention of the United Nations and concerned governments."

Tibetan Action Institute report

Should parents object, they are coerced with fines, or informed that their child would not be able to have any further schooling through any educational system. "…If we have to come back tomorrow, it won’t be good for you.…If you don’t listen [to us] we will squeeze [pressure] you one by one. That is easy for us to do….If you continue to choose not to acknowledge this policy and refuse to send your children to the schools, we will consider this to be an act of protest."

 

Human Rights Watch warns that China is pushing the Tibetan language to extinction through its policy of bilingual education. (Image: Screenshot / YouTube)