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Tibetan students protest use of Chinese
in classes
AP, BEIJING
Tibetan students in western China marched in protest against unconfirmed plans
to use the Chinese language exclusively in classes, teachers said yesterday, an
unusually bold challenge to authorities that reflects a deep unease over
cultural marginalization.
Students marched from school to school in the town of Tongren in Qinghai
Province on Tuesday chanting slogans against unconfirmed plans to supplant the
use of Tibetan, the teachers said.
The march ended by midday and classes resumed in the afternoon, a teacher at the
Huangnan Prefecture No. 1 Minorities High School in Tongren said.
The teacher, who refused to give his name out of fear of retaliation by
authorities, said about 300 students from the school had participated in the
march.
The London-based group Free Tibet and US broadcaster Radio Free Asia said
students from six different schools joined in the march with estimates of the
total number of participants ranging from 1,000 to 7,000.
Fuzzy video of the march posted to the Internet showed students, many of them in
school uniform, marching alongside Tibetan monks.
A teacher at the Huangnan Prefecture No. 2 Minorities High School said classes
had resumed yesterday. The teacher, who identified himself only by his surname,
Xu, said about 90 students took part.
The teachers said police did not intervene in the march and school
administrators did not plan to punish participants.
¡§The students marched peacefully. Their only demand was for continued use of
their mother tongue,¡¨ the No. 1 High School teacher said.
The schools use Mandarin and Tibetan alongside each other and both teachers said
they had seen no official orders to switch entirely to Chinese.
However, they said rumors and unconfirmed reports of a planned change in policy
had been spreading among students and faculty and no clarification had been
offered by education authorities.
Tibetan areas such as Tongren that lie outside the official Tibetan Autonomous
Region were sealed off following widespread anti-government rioting in the
spring of 2008.
Scores were arrested and a crackdown waged against Buddhist monasteries and
other repositories of Tibetan tradition.
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