Videos Show Principal Beating Tibetan Child in Boarding School
Australia Tibet Council has received reports from our partner organisation Tibet Action Institute, that a young Tibetan boy forced into China’s State-run boarding school system in Tibet was beaten by the school principal.
Footage of the principal of a boarding elementary school in Tibet beating a young Tibetan boy around November 18th 2024 has gone viral on Chinese social media.
Separately, there have also been reports of the death of a Tibetan child at a different boarding school in the same province that emerged in mid-October. This news follows disturbing allegations of abuse at another Chinese government-run boarding school made on camera by several young Tibetan monks in September.
The beating was documented in three different sets of footage posted on the Chinese social media site Douyin. The incident took place on or before November 18 at Tsokhyil Township Ethnic Boarding Primary School མཚོ་འཁྱིལ་ཡུལ་ཚོའི་བཅའ་སྡོད་མི་རིགས་སློབ་ཆུང་། (Chinese: Quanji Township National Boarding Primary School 泉吉乡民族寄宿制完全小学) in Kangtsa County རྐང་ཚ་རྫོང་། in the Tso Ngon མཚོ་སྔོན་། region of Tibet’s Amdo province (Chinese: Gangcha County, Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai 青海省海北藏族自治州刚察县). The school’s principal has been identified as Dang Qingfu (Chinese: 党青福). Dang is also the local Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Sources in the region, who remain unidentified for their safety, report that video footage of the incident was shared with the school’s parents’ association and was also posted online, where it went viral; Tibetans were later barred from sharing the footage and the school claimed the principal was under investigation, yet he remained in his position.
Multiple independent reports from Tibet also indicate that in mid-October, a child in grade four – aged approximately 10 or 11 years old – died after falling from a top bunk and then out of a window at an elementary boarding school also in Amdo near Rebkong City, called Maba Boarding Primary School ཐུན་རིན་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་ཐོ་རྒྱ་གྲོང་རྡལ་སྨད་པ་བཅའ་སྡོད་སློབ་ཆུང་། (Chinese: Tongren City Bao’an Town Maba Boarding Primary School 同仁市保安镇麻巴寄宿制小学). Sources reported that authorities responded by holding emergency meetings at boarding schools in the area, but did not indicate whether there was any investigation into what happened to the child nor whether school officials were investigated or held accountable for the child’s death.
Tibet Action Institute has documented further evidence of abuse and neglect at China’s colonial boarding schools in Tibet in a forthcoming report that suggests parents are afraid of retribution if they raise concerns about conditions or practices at China’s state-run boarding schools in Tibet, and school authorities are rarely held accountable for cases of abuse or death.
“These videos show what the Chinese government doesn’t want us to see: the sometimes fatal vulnerability of Tibetan children forced to live in state-run boarding schools,” said Lhadon Tethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute. ”Taking children as young as three or four away from their parents and moving them into institutions makes them extremely vulnerable to beatings, neglect, and other abuse. The Chinese government must end its colonial boarding school system in Tibet,” Tethong continued.
“The sense of impunity this school principal seems to have as he openly beats a Tibetan child is exactly the same sense of impunity the Chinese government appears to possess as it commits a slow form of genocide through the colonial boarding school system in Tibet,” said Dr. Gyal Lo, a Tibetan educational sociologist and Tibet Specialist at Tibet Action Institute. “Governments and UN bodies have sounded the alarm about colonial boarding schools in Tibet; what these children urgently need is an independent international investigation into the abuse they’re enduring.”
International concern has intensified in recent years as the Chinese government has moved to eradicate Tibetan-medium schooling and compel Tibetan parents to enroll their children in state-operated Chinese-medium boarding schools. An estimated one million Tibetan children aged four to 18 have been separated from their parents and made to live in state-run boarding schools that serve as instruments for stripping children of their Tibetan language and identity and indoctrinating them into Chinese nationalism and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. A growing number of UN Member States and independent human rights experts have urged Beijing to abolish the coercive boarding school system. The U.S. government has gone further, imposing visa sanctions on Chinese officials linked to the schools.
Australia Tibet Council has called for the Australian Government to issue Magnitsky Sanctions to those CCP officials responsible for this colonial boarding school system in Tibet.