Shocking news about Tibet… From Canada and the NED
Watch a video of this here: https://youtu.be/1Mjc-YvLvuo
An edited version of this article was published here: https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/ned-funded-group-equates-tibet-schools-to-canadian-residential-schools
A few days ago, someone asked for my opinion on education in Tibet, I honestly didn’t have an opinion. They pointed me to a video released a year ago by CBC, the Canadian broadcaster which centered on a Report alleging Tibetans are being stripped of their culture and forced into colonial boarding schools.
The use of three words: “colonial boarding schools” was pivotal for the shock-value. Canadian citizens, just 6-months earlier, had learnt that thousands of Native Americans were sent to “colonial boarding schools” with many of them dying of neglect. Apart from this report being misinformation, the timing and wording of its release, smacks of a very big attempt at projection and atrocity propaganda.
One can just imagine the meetings in NED on how to spin and project the horrors of finding out that their ancestors were responsible for both a cultural and a real genocide in which thousands of school-age Native-Americans were neglected to death. But, spin it they did.
Methodology from the “Separated from their Families and Hidden from the World” report
I’m not an expert on Tibet, I’ve never been there but I know many people who have. I’ve met many Tibetans in Guangdong, and on trips to Yunnan and Sichuan where there are many many more, they seem to be doing ok.
I do however, have knowledge and experience of Chinese education. So, I have a sense of what’s normal and what’s not in high schools.
When I clicked onto the link and watched this video, my friend was right, what I saw wasn’t normal at all. The school was entirely normal; the problem is, the reporting wasn’t.
First of all, the host mentioned a Report which had been released by the Tibetan Action Institute (TAI) so, I went to TAI’s website and found, in a circular reference, they had posted the CBC report. Circular referencing is common in anti-China narratives. One person or organisation writes a report, the claims are amplified by a media group with the report cited and then the claimant presents the media information on their website as fresh news.
TAI is just one of 12 Tibetan organisations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) a CIA cutout so, anyone looking for unbiased opinions, needs to look beyond organisations drawing funds from Washington; those funds are only given when the narrative meets the needs. NED’s needs don’t appear to be the promotion of a good system of governance and are often used to portray adversaries of Washington in negative ways.
Back to CBC’s video; while watching, we see a normal Chinese school with normal Chinese kids and a large classroom they showed was full of Tibetan language, which seems quite normal, especially in Tibet. Let’s take a look at some examples:
These photos may be two different classrooms or the same classroom at different times but they both show on the board at the back, and above the board, Tibetan language
This close up of a school book is not Mandarin, the national language of China, it’s a Tibetan school book, and clearly a well-used one too.
Something else I saw that was strange was an English freelance reporter, Richard Kimber commenting on this from Hong Kong. An NED sponsored report, created by a Tibetan Exile Group can be forgiven for not providing balance but CBC, the Canadian national broadcaster can’t.
Journalism 101 is to provide balance. An opinion, should have been sought from someone who has actually lived, worked, travelled or at least recently visited, Tibet but Kimber’s pedigree seems to be one of a creative Director of a multimedia company, a multi-media freelance Journalist and drone pilot who has written three articles for PBS News.
PBS is a non-profit public broadcaster based in Arlington Virginia. Arlington is not that well-known but most people know of its most famous tenant; the Pentagon, and its near neighbours in Langley, the CIA but that could be a coincidence.
Back to Tibet. I personally know several people who have visited Tibet, been to schools and made videos of their experiences. Two Americans were there just a few months ago and recorded not just their amazement at the infrastructure but their shock at the changes and how they were allowed to stop the car and visit any place or talk with any person they wanted. Another friend of mine, Daniel Dumbrill, went there two years ago and reported much the same thing. Including asking a student to explain a science experiment in Tibetan, which of course, she did.
Tibetan schools, as anyone who visits them knows, are full of Tibetan people surrounded by Tibetan culture, even the negative portrayal by CBC showed Tibetan culture and, surprisingly, even Han students there must learn Tibetan.
One point of the video which anyone in China would find hard to accept is the claim that Tibetan kids are forced into boarding schools. Many Chinese kids go to boarding schools, anyone who knows anything of the culture of China would know this, in the cities the number is lower, it’s about 12% but in regional areas it’s as high as 56%.
Tibet is vast region 2.5 million square kilometres, Germany fits in there more than three times but the population is just 3.6 million people, compared to Germany’s 84 million, 4.5 times higher, so distance makes boarding schools necessary for kids.
The report states that as many as 800,000 students attend these schools but admits the number is arrived at by estimates and extrapolation. If that seems familiar it is exactly the same number as another extrapolation by an academic; 800,000 Uyghurs were alleged to have been incarcerated in Xinjiang.
Think about that, 800,000 schoolkids in a region with a population of only 3.6 million. Apparently there’s a genocide going on and the school age population is 22% of the general population — how is that possible?
Some other things a researcher might have found, had they looked a little closer, is that all school costs in Tibet: uniform; books; accommodation; tutoring and transportation are free and have been since 1985.
Financial incentives are even provided to impoverished families to encourage kids to attend. Literacy in the region has risen from 5% in 1951 to 99.4% . There are benefits to compulsory education rather than enforced serfdom.
The report uses some of the same claims as the Uyghur narrative in that Tibetan students are denied their religion and I can confirm this as true. ALL students in ALL schools throughout China are forbidden to practice religion.
The disappointing aspect of this is that, the report’s creators, like most Tibetans in exile are the children of people who left 70, or more years ago. Their parents’ experiences have been passed down through the generation(s). Unfortunately, the flames of their animosity have been kindled and kept alight by 70 years of financing from a country that admits it uses Tibetans as a tool against China.
Rather than return to Tibet to experience the reality, Tibetans in exile are encouraged to believe these stories and are used for political purposes. It’s not shocking that a Tibetan group created this report.
What is shocking that a Canadian media outlet was used to project what was done historically in their country onto China without corroboration or balance. No reference was made to any person in Tibet, no Tibetan teachers or students and not even a foreigner with experience of Tibet. All of whom would have shot this “atrocity propaganda balloon” down in a moment.
I have an idea, a suggestion for the Chinese government: why not open a travel agency for exiled Uyghurs and exiled Tibetans, make it very cheap or even free. Invite them to come back and see what their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties and uncles are doing and how they’re living. I think that would be very, very good propaganda.
