Tibetan Students Forced to Take Military Training During Summer Break

Schoolchildren in Tibet are being forced by Chinese authorities into programs of military training during summer vacation in a move aimed at weakening their ties to their own culture and further indoctrinating them in the ideology of China’s ruling Communist Party, Tibetan sources say. Children aged 8-16 are now being sent from Tibet’s capital Lhasa and other areas to attend two training camps set up in southern Tibet’s Nyingtri, also called Kongpo, region, not far from the China-claimed Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Attendance at the two camps, called the Young Tibetan Snow Hawk Military Summer Camp and the Tibet Rong He Military Training Center, is depriving Tibetan schoolchildren of the few opportunities still available to them to learn their own Tibetan language in private settings outside of school, sources say.

“Coinciding with school break now in Lhasa, Tibetans are not permitted to hold private classes to learn Tibetan, and so the Chinese authorities are forcing Tibetan children to attend these military programs where they give political education instead,” a Tibetan living in the region told RFA in a written message.

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