NED funded group equates Tibet schools to Canadian residential schools
Written by: Jerry Grey
A National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded group is interfering in Canadian politics, by waging a campaign comparing Canada’s genocidal residential schools to schools in Tibet, China.
A news report released on December 8, 2021, by the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), centered on a Tibetan Action Institute (TAI) report. This report, “Separated from their Families and Hidden from the World”, alleged that Tibetans are being stripped of their culture and forced into colonial boarding schools.
The use of three words: “colonial boarding schools” was pivotal for shock-value. Canadian citizens, earlier that year, had learned that thousands of Indigenous children were buried in unmarked graves at Canada’s colonial boarding schools (ie. residential schools). These “schools” forcibly stole kids away from their families hoping to “get rid of the Indian problem” in Canada. They were part of a genocidal assimilation campaign by the Canadian government against Indigenous peoples. Apart from this TAI report being misinformation, the timing and wording of its release, smacks of a very big attempt at projection and atrocity propaganda.
TAI is just one of 12 Tibetan organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout.
The NED has a long history of regime change and manipulation of public opinion across the world, with a number of Canadian groups obtaining NED funding. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights was specifically funded by the NED to promote “awareness of recent legal scholarship that challenges the People’s Republic of China’s historical claim to Tibet”, “build support for stronger legislative and policy action on Tibet” and increase collaboration “among international parliamentarians on global Tibet initiatives.”
One can just imagine the meetings in NED and its funding recipient TAI, on how to spin and project the horrors of a genocide which a close ally committed against Indigenous peoples. But, spin it they did.
Methodology from the “Separated from their Families and Hidden from the World” report
To understand the ludicrous nature of this spin, look at the CBC news report itself. The video shows a normal Chinese school with normal Chinese kids and a large classroom. That classroom was full of Tibetan language, which seems quite normal, especially in Tibet. See some examples:
These photos may be two different classrooms or the same classroom at different time, but they both show the Tibetan language. One is on the board at the back, and the other is above the board.
This close up of a schoolbook is not Mandarin, the national language of China. In fact, it’s a Tibetan language school book, and clearly a well-used one too.
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. Han students there must learn Tibetan, a fact that may surprise many people.
People in China find the idea that Tibetan kids are forced into boarding schools to be ludicrous. 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, about 12 per cent. However, in regional areas the percentage is as high as 56 per cent.
Tibet is vast region of 2.5 million square kilometers, with a population of 3.6 million people. The distance between parts of the region makes boarding schools necessary for kids.
The TAI report and its impact
The TAI report, released in December 2021, states that as many as 800,000 students attend supposed colonial boarding schools in Tibet, 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.
Assess the numbers carefully. The claim is of 800,000 schoolkids in a region with a population of only 3.6 million people. Therefore, if these numbers are taken seriously, 22 per cent of Tibet’s general population was forced into supposed boarding schools. This is a wild claim.
Some other things a researcher might have found, had they looked a little closer, is that all school costs in Tibet: uniforms; 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 five per cent in 1951 to 99.4 per cent. 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. What’s never mentioned is that, under Article 8 of the Education Law of China, 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). Canada is not immune from this problem. Unfortunately, the flames of their animosity have been kindled and kept alight by 70 years of financing from the US, which 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.
Now this report has led to a study in Canada’s parliament. The parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights initiated a study titled “Chinese Government's Residential Boarding Schools and Preschools in the Tibet Autonomous Regions”, a few months after the TAI’s report was released. The first meeting of the study was held on February 10, 2023, and featured only Tibet dissidents along with Human Rights Watch. TAI was able to submit a brief to the meeting, which included a demand to sanction Chinese government officials, while its director, Lhadon Tethong, was one of the witnesses.
The next meeting of this study is set for April 21, 2023, as TAI’s influence in Canada shows no sign of waning.
It’s truly disgraceful 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. This didn’t occur for one single reason; these people would have shot this “atrocity propaganda balloon” down in a moment.
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Jerry Grey is a British-born Australian citizen who has lived and worked in China for almost two decades. He has travelled extensively through the country including several extended cycling trips which took him through the Muslim dominated regions of Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Cross Cultural Change Management and served as a British Police officer for over 10 years. He is active on social media where he spends much of his time debunking myths and correcting misinformation on China.
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