The Chinese Government’s policy of complete assimilation of Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur communities is being carried out most insidiously through its education policy which many have alleged it uses as an indoctrination tool and as a weapon to achieve its ultimate goal of one culture, one nation and one language. Chinese language has replaced Uyghur, Tibetan and Mongolian as the primary medium of instruction. Education policies under Xi Jinping have led to millions of Tibetan and Uyghur children forcibly separated from their families and placed in a coercive boarding schools system where they are subjected to intense training in Chinese language and culture. Those criticizing the government policies including teachers, writers and public intellectuals are being arrested and detained. The policies and actions of the government and the CCP raises the fundamental question of whether China’s education policy in East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia and Tibet constitutes cultural genocide.
Date: Friday, April 19, 2024
Time: 09:30 am (Toronto). 02:30 pm (London). 7:00 pm (New Delhi)
Event Type: Virtual (YouTube,Facebook and LinkedIn)
Participants:
| Abduweli Ayup Uyghur Linguist & Former Political Prisoner |
Dr. Gyal Lo Tibetan Activist & Educational Sociologist |
| Dugarjab L. Hotala Founding Director of InterMongol Network |
Moderator:
Sakina Batt
Host, Freedom Hour, AFI
Streaming Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsiaFreedomInstitute/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AsiaFreedomInstitute/streams
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asia-freedom-institute/
BIOGRAPHIES
Abduweli Ayup
Abduweli Ayup is a linguist specializing in Uyghur language education. He is a strong proponent of linguistic human rights, specifically, the right for the intergenerational transmission of language and culture. From December 2005 to June 2006, Abduweli was a visiting scholar at Ankara University, Turkey. He later received a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at the University of Kansas in the United States, and completed his master’s degree in Linguistics in 2011. Upon graduation, Abduweli returned to Xinjiang and opened schools to teach the Uyghur language, his mother tongue. Abduweli was arrested in Kashgar on August 20, 2013 by the economic investigation team of Tianshan District, Ürümqi City and accused of false funding and illegally raising funds for his proposed schools. Abduwali was released on November 20, 2014. Abduweli has returned to Kashgar, and continues to teach at his friends’ language training school, which his wife, Miraghul, worked in his absence.
Dr. Gyal Lo
Dr. Gyal Lo (Jia Luo), Tibet Specialist & Educational Sociologist, received his PhD from the University of Toronto, and was awarded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Fellowship for his research entitled “Culturally Relevant Education for Minority and Rural Village in Asia.” He has taught for over a decade as a faculty member at the Department of Tibetan Language and Culture, the Northwest University for Nationalities. Recently, he was appointed as a prioritized Full Professor at the Yunnan Normal University (YNU). His research interests cover Educational Sociology; the Structuration Theory, Tibetan Buddhism in Society, Mother Tongue and its Policy, Indigenous Knowledge in Curriculum, Social-Cultural Reproduction, Sociological Studies of Spirituality, Social Movement studies in Asia, and Multilingualism. He is the author of the LEXINGTON BOOKS: Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society, and Spirituality (2016), recently authored a guest assay of The One Million Tibetan Children in China’s Boarding Schools in New York Time (September 15, 2023), and Co-authored article: Erasing Tibet: Chinese Boarding Schools and the Indoctrination of a Generation, on Foreign Affairs (11/28/2023).
Dugarjab L. Hotala
Dugarjab L. Hotala is the founding director of InterMongol Network, a US-based Non-Governmental Organization aimed at preserving and promoting the cultural as well as kinship ties between all parts of the greater Mongol Nation. Born and raised in the Jungar region of Western Mongolia, presently the northern part of the so-called ‘Xinjiang’ or East Turkestan, Mr. Hotala traveled to and lived in all three major regions that are presently being colonized under Communist China, namely Xinjiang, IMAR, and Tibetan regions. Additionally, he lived as an undocumented refugee among Tibetans in Northern India, mainly in Dharamsala for a period of six and a half years. Mr. Hotala has been actively engaged with the Southern Mongolian struggle ever since the mid-1990s, with the establishment of the underground ‘Mongol Motherland Party’ in the occupied region. After his departure from the PRC, he became actively involved with the activities of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre (SMHRIC) since 1998, and since then continually taking part in lobbying activities targeting US Congress, Senate, and state representatives as well as state assemblies of states of New York, Colorado, and Michigan on issues regarding human rights violation cases in the China-occupied Mongolian regions. Currently, he resides in Chicago, IL, USA.
Sakina Batt
Sakina Batt is a Producer and Director at Meeting Point, a leading audio-visual production house and buying agency in Nepal. She directs promotional videos, does voice overs, writes scripts and copywriting for the videos in Meeting Point. Sakina worked for Tibet TV at the Central Tibetan Administration in India for four years (2017-2021) where she served as a news presenter and an interview host. She also made short documentaries for the channel, wrote scripts, conducted research, edited videos and anchored the show In Conversation with Tibet TV. Sakina has a Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and a bachelors from Delhi University.
