Have you ever had a nightmare where you couldn’t speak? Stuck in place, gripped by fear, a nightmare where you open your mouth to call out but can’t find the words?

For people living in occupied Tibet, the nightmare of losing your voice is a reality.

We’re producing the very first report on linguicide to combine first-hand testimonies from Tibetan refugees with open-source policy research.

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Language Death

Make no mistake: the Tibetan language is not disappearing. It is being erased by force. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has enforced language policies in what Tibetans call a cultural genocide: a targeted attack on Tibetan identity.

The Chinese government claims to follow a “bilingual education” policy to protect language diversity, but in reality, the system is pushing the Tibetan language to the margins, putting Chinese front and centre.

Linguicide is an attack on multiple fronts.

Controlling the next generation.

Around one million Tibetan children
are forced to attend government boarding schools. Children
as young as four are educated with CCP-approved lesson plans and
taught almost entirely in Chinese. In some parts of Tibet, parents must attend language classes to make sure that Chinese is spoken at home.

Chinese language immersion.

Tibetan place names and road signs
are removed. Poor career prospects for Tibetans who don’t become
fluent in Chinese. Even the name “Tibet” is under threat.

Ruthless persecution.

Buddhist monasteries are told to shut down
their free language classes. Tibetan educators are threatened or
detained for offering language instruction to children.

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 Xizang  Tibet

The erasure and control of language around Tibet and Tibetan identity extends to the international stage. In an act of colonial violence, the CCP is pushing for English-language references around Tibet to be changed to “Xizang”, the Chinese name for Tibet imposed by the Chinese government.

The push for Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) first above all else has severe consequences for those living in Tibet. While the CCP is making every effort to ensure that children are taught Chinese as their first language, many in the older generation did not have this education. As Tibetans, their first, and in many cases only, language is Tibetan.

In a system where legal documents, news stories, and even road signs, are written in Chinese, Tibetans are being deliberately ostracised and alienated from wider society.

What can I do?

World-leading researchers at Free Tibet and Tibet Watch are writing their next research report, revealing new information about the linguicide in Tibet. Tibetans have shared their testimonies with us at great personal risk.

This is the very first report on linguicide to combine testimonies from Tibetans with open-source policy research. That’s all down to our exceptional team of researchers at Tibet Watch, based in northern India and working across five languages, who work determinedly to collect testimonies from refugees who have just crossed the border.

The Tibetan Linguicide Report will take the campaign to the next level, giving MPs and lawmakers around the world the materials they need to support Tibet inside parliament and on the international stage.

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