- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- world@quokk.au
A new report by Human Rights Watch argues that the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in schools in Tibet raises “serious concerns under international human rights law”.
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It’s always the same with the propagandists:
- Tibet does not exist and there’s nothing going on there, it’s western propaganda (Tibet has existed for a long time, China invaded Tibet, there’s information from reliable sources genocide is happening)
- if there’s something going on it’s good for the tibetans and they want it (tibetans themselves have right to decide what they want, and they don’t seem to want to be genocided)
- their savage culture needs to be civilized anyway (this is just racism and imperialism to justify genocide and erasure of people)
- the leadership of Tibet is corrupt and Dalai Lama is on the epstein list so they need to be liberated (you can’t just invade your neighbors even if they have problems)
- big list of how “the west” has done bad things (others doing bad things too doesn’t justify doing them yourself)
- random reasons why it’s not genocide (erasure of culture is genocide by the definitions of genocide)
edit// oh, and next is personal attacks towards people going against their propaganda lmao. Here’s some facts to save some time if anyone wants to look for some faults to discredit me: I’m not american but finnish and I do not support their fascist idiots in power, my country did not colonize anyone (we were the poor losers), we allied with the nazis in ww2 because everyone was allied with soviets and left us at their mercy as a collateral (and we backstabbed the nazis the moment it was a better course of action), I do not support Israel and the genocide of palestinians needs to stop, Russia invaded Ukraine and is genociding there
Oh, and I do not hate chinese people or culture in any capacity, it’s their leadership that’s responsible. I am just very much against genocide, no matter who is doing it
Man, so much whataboutism.
How about we stop deliberately killing off cultures?
Except the only culture being killed off is a feudal theocracy.
Tibetan is still taught in their schools, along with Chinese. HRW is a Zionist organization. OP is a serial Zionist-apologia poster from Isn’treal (just click through their post history). Their agenda is to post US/Zionazi propaganda only.
Yeah some one needs to civilise that savage
Feudal theocracy in 1950s. Tibet never got the time to develop due to China’s brutal occupation.
Tankies don’t acknowledge the existence of time, they still attempt to describe Taiwan as a military junta.
“HRW is zionist organization”, this is hilariously mistaken, HRW has been super critical of the Israeli gov, IDF and West Bank settlers for decades now: https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/north-africa/israel/palestine
I concede my claim about HRW. I was wrong about them being a zionist org. I’m not wrong about the rest though.
Literally US Zionist propaganda
From Wikipedia
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a nonprofit watchdog group headquartered in New York City
In 2026, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director resigned after HRW blocked a report that argued that Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right of return is a “crime against humanity”.
In 2014, two Nobel Peace Laureates, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire, wrote a letter signed by 100 other human rights activists and scholars criticizing HRW for its revolving-door hiring practices with the U.S. government, its failure to denounce the U.S. practice of extrajudicial rendition, its endorsement of the U.S. 2011 military intervention in Libya, and its silence during the 2004 Haitian coup d’état.
Why are you posting Zionist propaganda "NGO"s?
I’m no fan of Zionists but what you are doing is attacking and attempting to discredit the source to distract from the message that they are trying to push.
The story here is the attempted cultural genocide of the Tibetan people by the Chinese government. I come from a nation that has almost lost its language as a result of similar colonial cultural genocide. This issue may not be real or important to you but it is an attempt to destroy a nation’s cohesion and identity.
The real question for me is why are you trying to discredit an article on this, what is your agenda here Riverside?
It isn’t cultural genocide to teach the only useful language in the region, while requiring the cultural language also be taught.
Who are you to decide what languages are useful?
Cultural erasure is a form of genocide by most definitions.
China is not just requiring the teaching of Mandarin, it is taking steps to eradicate the use of Tibetan and other non-Han languages.
And yes, Western countries have done it too, and it’s just as much a crime when they do it. For example, in Britain, children used to be punished for speaking Welsh or Gaelic in schools. The same happened with Catalan and Basque in Spain. Those are just two of many examples.
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attempting to discredit the source to distract from the message that they are trying to push
Yes, because the message they’re trying to push is “China bad” as a US-gvt and Zionist controlled “NGO”, in the current cold war that the US is instigating against China as the former loses worldwide economic dominance.
The story here is the attempted cultural genocide of the Tibetan people by the Chinese government
Yes, and I’d take it seriously if it was real and not fabricated propaganda designed to target the most progressive among us.
I come from a nation that has almost lost its language as a result of similar colonial cultural genocide
I’m very sorry about that. Is China the aggressor in your instance, or are you projecting Western colonialist history onto China because the US propaganda outlets are telling us to do so?
This issue may not be real or important to you
It’s extremely important to me. And if it were important to you, you’d be doing activism not for the fabricated false news about Tibetan language, but actual cultural genocides ongoing right now in the west that I haven’t seen you do activism about, such as Breton or Occitan in France, the latter of which has gone from 1Mn speakers to 100k over the past century and, to this day, enjoys no official recognition or status. Lhasa Tibetan is, TODAY, the official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. In the 1950s, there were about a million speakers of Tibetan in China, today there are about 6 million. From Wikipedia:
"In the Texas Journal of International Law, Barry Sautman stated that “none of the many recent studies of endangered languages deems Tibetan to be imperiled, and language maintenance among Tibetans contrasts with language loss even in the remote areas of Western states renowned for liberal policies”
I understand your concern with the preservation of languages and cultures, I completely share that mindset. However, I urge you to look at the material facts beyond US/Zionist-fabricated fearmongering: Chinese currency portrays the currency values written in Tibetan among other languages of China, Tibetan speakers only grow over time according to modern evidence, and the countries warning against such acts are literally carrying out unspoken acts of linguistic genocide.
Yes, because the message they’re trying to push is “China bad” as a US-gvt and Zionist controlled “NGO”
Yes but are they lying? Is it not true that China is unilaterally changing the primary language to Chinese for schools in Tibet?
Yes, and I’d take it seriously if it was real and not fabricated propaganda
Why do you say it is not real, human rights watch is just one source, a quick search leads to several sources you can find yourself. This is also not a new issue, there is information on the promotion of Mandarin over Chinese in Tibetan schools going back years. Just because you do not accept what is happening does not make it propagand
Is China the aggressor in your instance, or are you projecting Western colonialist history onto China
Colonialism is still colonialism, doesn’t matter if it’s Chinese or western it’s all the same. Erasure of cultural identity and especially language is always a big part.
And if it were important to you, you’d be doing activism
I don’t need you to tell me what I should be doing buddy.
I haven’t seen you do activism about, such as Breton or Occitan in France,
To be fair you haven’t seen me do anything, I am an anonymous internet stranger. For all you know I was marching the streets of Rennes in support of my brothers there.
This is also “whataboutism” on your part, one of the lowest forms of rhetoric. Up your game and stick to the point at hand please.
is, TODAY, the official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. In the 1950s, there were about a million speakers of Tibetan in China, today there are about 6 million.
I see that you capitalised the word today, either you understand the concept of time or are, like Donald Trump, a fool who capitalises words for no reason. You should also then be able to understand that this measure is meant to reduce the amount of native Tibetan speakers going forwards in time. You seem to be trying to use the fact that there are more Tibetan speakers today than in 1950 as proof that China is not trying to reduce native Tibetan speakers in the future? How does this make sense in your thick head buddy? Does this type of argument ever work on people?
Have you ever considered that maybe the Zionists, the USA AND China are all bad? All are shitty imperial colonists.
Cool, keep believing your western made-up anti-China propaganda about Tibet erasure while all scholars on the topic agree that the language is healthy, preserved, and the number of speakers keeps growing…
I’m no fan of Zionists but what you are doing is attacking and attempting to discredit the source to distract from the message that they are trying to push.
It cuts both ways. The source here is probably pushing this news to align with a certain (pro-American) narrative, likely with some amplifications along the way.
Gasp, New York City! I only get my news straight from Beijing! Everybody else is a zionist! /s
Great job ignoring the part about the organization blocking reports about the Isntreali genocide in Palestine
I dont know the details of the exact issue mentioned above, but HRW has no problems commenting on Israeli genocide.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-extermination-acts-genocide-gaza
Just out of curiosity: the genocide only intensified after 2022, we all know now that Palestinians have been enduring an apartheid and Gaza has been besieged and starved for decades. Can you find similar HRW statements before 2022, or are they just releasing them now to cover their asses?
In 2026, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director resigned after HRW blocked a report that argued that Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right of return is a “crime against humanity”.
Hmm. The more you know.
These are the people who pretend to be super concerned about the Tibetan language while ignoring that Tibet enjoys being an Autonomous Republic within China (with all the added political power), that Tibetan is the official language in the Tibetan Autonomous Republic, and that the number of Tibetan speakers has skyrocketed from about 1mn in the 1950s to about 6mn nowadays. For comparison, in 1920 there were about 1mn speakers of Occitan in southern France and now there are about 100k and Occitan still doesn’t enjoy any official character
Am I in r/sino?
Eradicating one culture deemed medieval and feudalistic and replacing it with a ethnosupremacist form of feudalist capitalism disguised in a pseudo-Maoist wrapper… Standard fare in the Pooh World where what the Hans are doing is “liberation”. Not only that, the Tibetan plateau is like a smorgasbord for Mainlander corporations looking for rare-earth resources, so there comes the program of forced assimilation which is no more different from banishing all Palestinians from their lands.
(BTW, Israel sold to China some several key technologies, including early-warning radar.)
Mao was actually less brutal to ethnic minorities than the post-Mao CCP has been.
but Mao still has the high score for kills. Estimated 65,000,000
What I don’t get about the CCP shills is why they think I would trust the Chinese government when I don’t even trust my own government.
Resistance since the uprising of 1959 has persisted under the current Dalai Lama, a “potent force despite decades of propaganda, political crackdowns and education drives aimed at undermining his authority”, living in exile in India.
What authority are they talking about? Are they arguing that education should not be offered and that instead theocratic leadership is what is most important when considering human rights? I think rather the real propaganda comes from the west in favour of a feudal theocracy.
They’re unironically calling for child sex slaves to be reinstated.
Self-determination doesn’t always mean that people will make what we regard as optimal choices.
HRW only cares for human rights violations in certain countries. Fuck this imperialistic apparatus.
In addition to what deft is saying in another comment here is the HRW openly stating Israel is committing “crimes against humanity” and “apartheid.”
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/israel-and-palestine
Nobody can save the whole world at once…
I wouldn’t believe shit coming from human rights watch, people are being made stateless where I’m from and I haven’t heard a peep out of them. Current estimates look around 300k or so.
Why wouldn’t you believe it? That only proves they have bias, not that they’re lying. At worst it’s no better than US, Russian, or Chinese state media. Which many happily accept. If there’s a problem with the message counter the message, not the messenger.
Im saying they are driven by western interest and not actual human rights watch issues.
Human rights apply to white people only and political issues that the west doesn’t agree on, this is what they have turned the UN to. Their credibility isn’t there.
I don’t disagree that they are pointing out things for their own agenda. But just because someone has an agenda and points something out doesn’t make it false. The fact that they haven’t pointed out nor ever made claims about groups XY and z. Doesn’t mean they lack credibility. They generally been correct when pointing out abuses of the groups they have pointed out. You’re still attacking the messenger and cannot disprove the message.
The amount of people here using EXACTLY the same disgusting reasoning that 19th century Europeans used for genocide is… well disgusting.
It’s an intrinsic feature of single-ethnicity hegemony, and is present in almost all forms of nationalism and most imperialism.
This thread is great for updating your racist user tag list.
This is the case across all of China, as Mandarin is the language of the state and citizens need it to get good jobs and talk amongst each other. We need to stop pretending Tibet is being oppressed. The Dalai Lama was in the Epstein files.
Tibet is being oppressed. The Dalai Lama was in the Epstein files.
Those thing are not mutually exclusive
He’s the official leader of Tibet in the west. He represents the Tibetan political movement. If you understood Tibet as the Lama sees it, you’d understand what’s being advocated for is a theocracy that practiced slavery. “Free Tibet” is Lost Cause revisionism.
Before modern Chinese administration, monasteries and the DL held great power, owned vast swaths of land and held legal authority, similar to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Since China incorporated Tibet there’s been secular law and modern infrastructure built in Tibet.
The Chinese government wants all areas it governs to have industries which give people work to build a better quality of life. Part of that is having the communication skills to interact with the job market in China. Mandarin in schools is basic education for future citizens to find work. And outside of anti-government, pro-monastery propaganda, Tibetans are allowed to say, write, and read anything they want in their native language.
There is a difference between government and culture. The Chinese are also trying to terminate the Tibetan language and the cultural customs of common people.
The Chinese are also trying to terminate the Tibetan language and the cultural customs of common people.
no they arent
Oh ok
Ah but the big thing you’re missing. Is Tibet doesn’t want this.
China has done everything it can to destroy the culture and make them culturally Chinese.
but the big thing you’re missing. Is Tibet doesn’t want this
Really? Could you show us the polls proving discontent in Tibet? Or is it just an unfalsifiable claim made by the so-called "Tibet Government in Exile, itself funded by the US?
You’re falling for US propaganda, you have literally no evidence that Tibetans living in Tibet have serious concerns with their government.
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Go ahead, show me the surveys in Tibet Autonomous Region proving that Tibetans want to secede from China
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Tibet doesn’t want modern infrastructure like the Chinese have built? They don’t want a modern education or modern jobs? They want to be ruled by monasteries headed by the Dalai Lama, a theocracy led by a man in the Epstein files? You must be pretty racist against Tibetans to believe that.
They don’t want to be Chinese or China. The rest is irrelevant and quiet frankly insulting.
Europeans said the same about indigenous Americans. I guess you support that too?
It’s the same thing China is doing to Uyghur Muslims.
It’s called genocide
Even more insulting is comparing real genocide with having children take Mandarin classes.
Show me videos of the Chinese treating the Tibetans the way Israelis treat Palestinians. Show me Chinese soldiers shooting missiles at Tibetan schools, hospitals, and places of worship. Show me the Chinese military killing Tibetans by the thousands and bragging about it.
Why hasn’t the international criminal court put out an arrest warrant if an actual genocide is taking place? Cry me a river, you propagandistic liar!
Suck my nut it’s genocide and I don’t care how much you say it isn’t.
We aren’t arguing an opinion. It’s a fact.
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group”
They don’t want to be Chinese or China
Again: did you ask Tibetans? Assert your source
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there is no genocide there, unjust prosecution of certain ethnicities? on smaller level yes. Genocide? not even close.
Genocide is the death of a culture. If China has it their way there would be no Tibet.
Ok then the US should be allowed to dismantle Xi Jinping’s dictatorship and make everyone in Asia speak English.
Very funny. But for the US to be strong enough to save the Tibetans, first you would have to free all the poor US students who are being genocided into learning Spanish.
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They’re not, but one of those is made up by western propaganda.
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propaganda
I “wonder” whom they got cultural-genocide-methods from…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Hopi+prisoners+in+alcatraz&t=fpas&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
( Hopi men in Alcatraz prison, because they wouldn’t sign their agreement with their children being taken from them, at gunpoint, to be enforced into the residential-“school” institutions ).
Back in the Nuremberg trials, we had the absolute-gall to maintain that MoralLaw, aka NaturalLaw, aka RuleOfJustLaw, “outranks” RuleOfLegalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Where, in our genociding of Indigenous Peoples & their culture, both before & after, did we demonstrate that principle??
Oh, we “have the right to be 2-faced” … ??
Anybody who’s tried reading Wehle’s book “How to Think like a Lawyer, and Why”, knows that legalism is the whole of the law, & RuleOfJustLaw/MoralLaw/NaturalLaw … hasn’t got any power to outrank precident.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/how-to-think-like-a-lawyer-and-why
( the SCOTUS gutting of the US’s Voting Rights Act stands on legalism, e.g. )
Yes, it is true that I already-know that CCP gaslights about holding to international-law.
My point is that our world holds to “rule of law”, NOT to Rule of Law, & that our pretending otherwise is itself gaslighting.
Yes, Jim Crow 2.0 is being enforced in the US, now.
Yes, ICE is embodying the SAME “principles” in the US that the IDF is embodying in Gaza
( this short, and difficult-to-watch, video explains that … while showing us the murders of ICE, & their other IDF-clone behaviors, … while showing us the IDF’s original-renditions. Please have the guts to see it with your own eyes: it changes one to see & understand, accurately… https://youtu.be/qhZBVLQK9MU )
& yes, this supremacism/genociding principle is enacting in Europe ( ask the Ukranians’ stolen children about it ), in Asia ( see the article linked in the OP ), in the Middle-East ( Netanyahu’s “Israel” … I discovered yesterday that the real LivingSpirit-loyal Jews are calling Netanyahu “Amalek”, which is the embodyer-of-anti-Judaism/“Jewish”-evil ) & in the Americas.
This is part of a global paradigm, not something local to 1 of the 4 world-pushing “poles” of Earth!
It’s the principle/paradigm that needs opposing, not letting the framing be made “only-local”, because so long as we remain blindfolded against the globalness-of-the-paradigm, then we remain as ineffective as they want us to be!
_ /\ _
A) cultural genocide has been a thing, in lots of places, for millenia. As one of the oldest civilisations, China has plenty of examples in its history, no need to rely on Americans for inspiration.
B) countries shouldn’t get a turn or an hall pass at crimes against humanity because other countries did or are doing the same.
^Modern whataboutism propaganda will exhaust you by the end so you forget entirely that this thread is about China’s human rights abuses.
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And they always have 3-4 CCP-approved tangentially-related sources to back up their clanky dissertation.
Many ancient empires did the same, millennia before the US existed.
It was shit then and it’s still shit now.
I’m not trying to score points against you here when I say your comment is incoherent. I cannot parse a lot of what you have written. Maybe if you stuck to simpler sentence structure, your message would come across.
China’s conduct towards ethnic minorities is pretty bad at times, but this seems pretty lukewarm.
I’m not defending China’s treatment of Tibetans in general, but a uniform language of instruction is a nothingburger. Not a nothingburger I’m happy about to be clear, but still a nothingburger. Otherwise at least half the world would be engaging in cultural genocide
Otherwise at least half the world would be engaging in cultural genocide
Yes. This is why both nobody cares and it’s a huge deal. We’ve done this to each other for thousands of years. The definition of genocide is the destruction of a culture, it doesn’t have to be killing. It can be this.
What is ‘this’? Compulsory education in the Tibetan language and culture? Because that’s what actually goes on in Tibet.
Yes the primary language taught is the one that will allow them to have access to the entire rest of the country. They are still forced to learn tibetan to receive a certificate of education.
Racist choice of wording. Forced to learn a native language after experiencing an invasion in less than a lifetime.
Interesting
You understand Tibet was not invaded right? Just like the US was not invaded by the French during the revolutionary war.
You’re right Tibet isn’t even real. Avatar the Last Airbender isn’t an allegory to anything.
Hahahaha China’s imperialism is always like “the Chinese army arrived, the enemy laid down their guns and embraced their saviors. There was 90,000 less Tibetans two years later”
And you think anybody buys it.
It’s like the fishermen vessels shit they pull, tiananmen square, “color revolutions” it’s so childish. Absolutely pathetic and transparent.
Sure, but they are also banning after hours school teaching Tibetan
Yeah, and that’s not a nothingburger. Like I said I’m objecting to the focus on school education in Mandarin in thr article, not defending China’s broader treatment of Tibetans.
Ghaza and Lebanon woukd like to have a work with the HRW.
And that word would be “thanks for your support”?
https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/north-africa/israel/palestine
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