"Cultural Genocide" and Tibet

“Cultural Genocide and Tibet” (excerpts)
Sautman, Barry (2003). Texas Journal of International Law, 38(2):173-246.

Language

European colonialism eliminated at least 15% of all languages spoken at the time and "language murder" is recognized as "one of the basic tools of ethnocide, of the deculturation of peoples, which has always been perpetrated by colonization and is still the semi-official aim of governments which do not recognize the rights of their native ethnic minorities." "The Dalai Lama claims that migration to Tibet threatens to cause the eradication of the Tibetan language" and has stated, "our own language no longer has any value in our own land." A US Congressman has stated that "Tibetan Buddhists face virtual extinction. There is cultural genocide today taking place in Tibet. Their language is being stripped out." These assertions are not mere hyperbole but falsely represent that "linguicide" is part of a plan to destroy Tibetan culture.

China's minority tongues are seen as preservative of ethnic cultures, while Mandarin is viewed as a bridge to the urban areas. PRC law states that minorities enjoy freedom to use their own languages in autonomous areas, where 98% of Tibetans live. In exercising their autonomy in language choice, ethnic minority areas have increasingly promoted bilingualism, especially in education. Minority area regulations encourage local language use in primary instruction, with putonghua introduced in primary or lower middle school grades. Most minority areas, including Tibet, follow this practice. There is a measure of flexibility in the TAR, however. Some rural counties have reportedly abandoned bilingualism, in pat due to a lack of putonghua-speaking teachers.

Claims that primary schools in Tibet teach putonghua are in error. Tibetan was the main language of instruction in 98% of TAR primary schools in 1996; today, putonghua is introduced in early grades only in urban schools. In six years of Tibetan primary school, pupils are said to spend a total of 1598 hours studying Tibetan and 748 hours studying Chinese, a two-to-one ratio. Because less than four out of ten TAR Tibetans reach secondary school, primary school matters most for their cultural formation. In other Tibetan areas, primary schooling may be in Tibetan, and in some places, parents can choose the language of primary education. More often than note, however, Tibetan students outside the TAR are taught in putonghua because of either parental choice or,, in some places, because Tibetan language instruction is unavailable due to a shortage of Tibetan instructors or a high percentage of other ethnies living among Tibetans

Secondary education in Tibetan is more common outside the TAR than inside it. TAR authorities in 2000 asserted that "local junior middle schools are gradually turning to teaching subjects on natural sciences with Tibetan language" and that "Tibetan language is the only teaching language for 102 classes in some local middle schools in [the TAR], while the Tibetan language is partially used in some other local middle schools." In the famous Lhasa Middle School, the region's best, there are six classes a week on the Tibetan language, five on putonghua, and four on the English language...There is evidence that Tibetan schools in the best secondary schools in Lhasa prefer Chinese as the language of instruction, while those elsewhere would benefit from having Tibetan as the main language of schooling.

In 1999, secondary school Tibetan language texts were introduced in the TAR, and Tibetans are now about 50% of TAR secondary school teachers. Two trends, however, seem to be clashing in terms of the language of instruction for Tibetans. On the one hand, instructional material in Tibetan is increasingly available; on the other hand, Tibetan parents generally want bilingual education for their children, even at the primary level, so that they can compete with native putonghua speakers if they do continue their educations at higher levels. This attitude is no different from what obtains in the emigre community in India, where “Tibetan students fear that a Tibetan medium primary education will reduce their chance of success in secondary schools as well as their career prospects.

At the tertiary level, many Tibetans major in humanities, and, at two universities, they can study humanistic disciplines in Tibetan. At that level it is unlikely that putonghua instruction contributes to language erosion. At universities around the world where much instruction is not given in the national language, but in English (e.g., Hong Kong, Netherlands, Sweden) students still speak their mother tongue....A specialist of education in Tibet has noted that it was not until 1994 that the emigre administration endorsed Tibetan as the language of instruction in the primary schools of Tibetan settlements in India, and he "Tibetan government-in-exile may have been no more successful that the Chinese government in providing Tibetan-medium education for the children in the refugee community in India, even though the preservation of Tibetan culture is one of its primary goals." It should also be noted that mother tongue instruction in Tibet compares favourably to the situation of ethnic Tibetan natives of India's Ladakh. Schooling there is largely only for boys and occurs in monasteries. Instruction in the Ladakh state school system is in Urdu, a language unfamiliar to Ladakhi children, 90% of whom fail to finish school.

The emigres have contended that "Chinese-built schools teach Chinese history and culture in the Chinese language and propagate communism while denigrating religion" and that the education system is aimed at "erasing cultural identity." However, a study of a Tibetan secondary school in Sichuan by a US anthropologist found that textbooks used in the school "do contain a fair amount of material drawn from Tibetan sources and relevant to Tibetan cultural life in the road sense"; that the lessons based on the texts "play an important role in establishing a sense of unified Tibetan culture and identity among young Tibetans"; and that religious concepts were treated respectfully by the Tibetan teachers.

Local Tibetans themselves, however, did not necessarily consider Tibetan to be their first choice as a language of instruction because it narrowed career choices compared to Chinese.

The TAR issued regulations in the late 1980s on the use of Tibetan, with the aim to "make Tibetan the dominant language in Tibet." A TAR law to protect the Tibetan language was finally passed in 2002. While Tibetan is by no means dominant in urban Tibet, it is in most rural areas, where some 85% of Tibetans live. Regulations provide that public signs and documents issued by public institutions at or above the county level must be bilingual, while documents at the township and village levels can be in Tibetan only. . . Tibetan-language newspapers, radio, films, and other media also exist in all Tibetan areas, although much of what they produce is translated form Chinese, due in part to limited funding.

Except for some persons living at the edge of the Plateau, Tibetans continue to speak their mother tongue and moreover associate it with both social status and group solidarity. In the TAR, and ethnic Tibetan who cannot speak Tibetan is practically unheard of, while in the whole PRC, some 92.5-94% of Tibetans speak Tibetan; the remainder speak either another ethnic minority language or Putonghua. Outside the TAR, 10-30% of Tibetans can also speak putonghua, but in the TAR, apart from Lhasa, only about 5% of Tibetans can do so. Even assuming that all TAR Tibetans in cities and towns are to an extent bilingual, only about 15% of Tibetans would be accorded that classification. In fact, "Tibetans with anything beyond a rudimentary grasp of putonghua comprise a very small portion of the total population." Members of a Western "mission" dispatched to Tibet by the emigre administration claim that "Chinese is the dominant language which everyone is expected to speak." This assertion is plainly wrong and was based only on a visit to a secondary school and a university in Lhasa. Tibetan peasants are not expected to speak Chinese, nor are urban Tibetan workers, unless they work with non-Tibetans.

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. In the United States, for example, all indigenous languages are nearly extinct in California, though some groups are attempting to revitalize those communication forms. French is found increasingly less in Louisiana, and there is official and popular hostility toward other “ethnic" languages and bilingualism in general. The United States is described as "a veritable cemetery of foreign languages"

The experience of language loss has also affected Tibetans who emigrate outside of South Asia. In Canada, "young Tibetans lead Western lifestyles and speak little Tibetan." A scholar writing in an emigre online newspaper has observed that young Tibetan-Americans generally do not speak Tibetan and that no one in the Tibetan community in Washington, D.C., could read Tibetan. Tibetans who emigrated from Nepal to New York City "tend to favor speaking Nepali rather than Tibetan and English." The Dalai Lama has had to urge Tibetans in the United States to speak Tibetan in their homes.

Bilingualism in Tibet is promoted by policies that require that all laws, official notices, commercial signs, and the like be bilingual; that allow Tibetans to interact with government in their own language; and that have created mass media with substantial Tibetan components. Official policies in Tibet go beyond the respect for minority languages required by international law or practiced in European rights-based" states. Most of these states have not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, even though its obligations are fairly minimal. In education, for example, it is satisfied by making available pre-school education in minority languages.

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"Language inflation is targeted to affect policymaking by altering perceptions and limiting the options of political actors. Confronted by accusations from a world spiritual leader that China is committing cultural genocide in Tibetan, many Westerners unquestioningly accept this characterization. Meanwhile those who doubt its accuracy nevertheless become reticent and find that they must, per Secretary Powell, show "solidarity with the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet." In doing so, the perforce diminish their capacity to aid in a compromise of the Tibet Question by signaling to the PRC that they are in the thrall of separatists and by strengthening those Tibetan emigre forces that oppose compromise."

Conclusion

Tibetologist Elliot Sperling observes that "within certain limits in the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression" and "the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored." Other supporters of the emigre cause, including Tibet scholar Robert Barnett and German Green Party leader Antje Vollmer, also recognize the inaccuracy of the cultural genocide claim. By all accounts, Tibetanness remains robust. As a US reporter recently observed: "[F]or all the changes in styles and attitudes--mostly among the small minority of Tibetans living in cities--Tibetan identity remains strong."

If the concept of cultural genocide in Tibet is inapposite legally and empirically, the charge also has baleful political effects. In universal terms, the application of the concept exemplifies a language inflation that disserves the urgent struggle against destruction of peoples and their cultures. It has been said that "the notion of genocide is marked by conceptual confusion, often compounded by its rhetorical use on the part of those seeking to inflame and stigmatise social and political discourse." Scholars have catalogued many misuses of the term, with one concluding that "when one needs a catch-all term to describe 'oppression' of one form or another, one often resorts to labeling it 'genocide.' The result is the debasement of the concept."

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In specific terms, use of the concept of cultural genocide as a tactical weapon in the Tibet case disserves the effort to resolve the Tibet Question. Genocide has been called the "crime of crimes" and the "crime of the century." A UN body has deemed it "the ultimate crime and the gravest violation of human rights it is possible to commit." As Koshkenniemi observes:

“To be branded as a genocidal State is to be classified as the worst kind of criminal, a pariah, an outlaw among States, to have been put beyond the pale of civilised humanity. The evocative strength or the symbolic value of genocide is formidable....Even to be accused of genocide affects a State's international standing, its political, diplomatic and commercial contacts with other States.”

The attempt to associate China's leaders with the level of criminality implied in a charge of genocide, even if "only" cultural, surely hardens their distrust of the emigres with whom they must deal if a compromise on Tibet is to be reached. PRC and local leaders, both Tibetan and non-Tibetan, are convinced that they have done the opposite of committing "genocide" by pouring great treasure and effort into the development of Tibet, while preserving key elements of traditional culture. They deem it an affront that accusations of "cultural genocide" emanate from emigre leaders. The latter, according to PRC leaders, have "done nothing to contribute to Tibet’s economic and social development," "[know] nothing of the real situation there," and seek to "set aside [Tibet] as a museum of ancient culture."