[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
GROWING CONSTRAINTS ON LANGUAGE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY IN TODAY'S CHINA
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-621 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate House
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Chair JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts,
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California Co-chair
MARCO RUBIO, Florida CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
STEVE DAINES, Montana BRIAN MAST, Florida
ANGUS KING, Maine VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
MICHELLE STEEL, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Not yet appointed
Matt Squeri, Staff Director
Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Statements
Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from
Oregon; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China..... 1
Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern, a U.S. Representative from
Massachusetts; Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on
China.......................................................... 2
Statement of Gerald Roche, Senior Research Fellow, Department of
Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University............ 4
Statement of Enghebatu Togochog, Director, Southern Mongolian
Human Rights Information Center................................ 6
Statement of Lhadon Tethong, Director, Tibet Action Institute.... 7
Statement of Ayup Abduweli, Uyghur writer and linguist........... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Roche, Gerald.................................................... 30
Togochog, Enghebatu.............................................. 36
Tethong, Lhadon.................................................. 39
Abduweli, Ayup................................................... 42
Merkley, Hon. Jeff............................................... 43
McGovern, Hon. James P........................................... 45
Submissions for the Record
List of Uyghur Intellectuals Imprisoned in China from 2016 to the
Present, submitted by Ayup Abduweli............................ 46
Article by the Tibet Action Institute, entitled ``Separated from
Their Families, Hidden from the World: China's Vast System of
Colonial Boarding Schools Inside Tibet,'' submitted by Lhadon
Tethong........................................................ 72
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form.......................... 133
Witness Biographies.............................................. 135
(iii)
GROWING CONSTRAINTS ON LANGUAGE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY IN TODAY'S CHINA
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:48 a.m. via
videoconference, Senator Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China, presiding.
Also present: Co-chair James P. McGovern, Senator Jon
Ossoff, and Representative Michelle Steel.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``Growing
Constraints on Language and Ethnic Identity in Today's China''
will come to order.
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I want to
acknowledge that this is our first hearing since the
publication of the Commission's annual report on human rights
conditions and rule of law developments in China. Every year,
the rigorously researched and sourced work of the Commission's
nonpartisan research staff makes a profound contribution to the
understanding of these issues in Congress, the executive
branch, the academic and advocacy communities, and elsewhere.
And that is certainly true again this year. When the Chinese
government seeks to mislead the world about the treatment of
Chinese citizens and the government's critics, the fact-based
reporting of the CECC Annual Report shines a light and helps
document the truth.
Increasingly, this work informs and catalyzes meaningful
action. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is the latest
example in a string of significant laws that grew out of the
CECC's reporting. As Congress now works to advance China-
focused legislation, it's crucial that it include tangible
steps advocated by this Commission on a bipartisan and
bicameral basis, such as expanded humanitarian pathways for
Hong Kong residents and Uyghurs fleeing Chinese government
persecution, as well as the creation of a China Censorship
Monitor and Action Group to protect U.S. businesses and
individuals from censorship and intimidation.
I'd like to thank the Commission's staff--incredible team--
for its tireless, professional, and expert work preparing such
a high-quality report. While it's truly a team effort, with
significant contributions from everyone on the team, I'd like
to especially recognize Megan Fluker, who played an integral
role in eight of these annual reports and managed production of
the last several before leaving the Commission last fall. So,
Megan, I know you're on your next chapter, but we really
appreciate your many years of dedicated effort.
Some of the most heartbreaking reporting details the
genocide being perpetrated against Uyghurs and other
predominantly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region, as well as elements of eugenics and
population control policies directed at ethnic minorities.
These are not the only ways in which the Chinese Communist
Party seeks to destroy religious and ethnic minorities. Chinese
authorities have engaged in a years-long campaign of
sinicization, requiring greater conformity with officially
sanctioned interpretations of Chinese culture.
One of the most pernicious aspects of this campaign is the
targeting of ethnic minorities' language and identity. Under a
policy that promises bilingual education, authorities in fact
largely replace instruction in ethnic minority languages with
instruction in Mandarin Chinese. Meanwhile, only a fraction of
the languages spoken or signed in China today receive official
recognition and support, threatening the ability and rights of
unrecognized language communities to use and develop their
languages. These policies break promises made to ethnic
minorities under China's constitution, under the Regional
Ethnic Autonomy Law, and under international standards such as
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In this hearing we will hear from expert witnesses about
the sinicization campaign that runs afoul of these standards
for protecting linguistic rights. We'll hear about the recent
substantial reduction in the use of Mongolian language
instruction and the harsh crackdown on Mongolian culture that
followed protests over these policies. We'll hear about
insidious and widespread efforts to separate Tibetan children
from their parents, placing them in boarding schools to disrupt
the intergenerational transmission of mother languages.
We'll also hear about the detention and imprisonment that
often befalls those who stand up for language, who stand up for
cultural rights, including the personal experience of one of
our witnesses after he opened a Uyghur language kindergarten.
This coercive assimilation erodes language, culture, and
identity for ethnic minorities in China. I look forward to
today's witnesses helping the Commission better understand the
cost to communities of these policies as we work with Uyghurs,
Tibetans, Mongolians, and others to protect their cultures from
destruction.
I'd now like to recognize Congressman McGovern for his
opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON
CHINA
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing on language and identity in the People's
Republic of China. First, I want to join you in welcoming the
release of the Commission's Annual Report for 2021 last week.
It comprehensively documents the Chinese government's appalling
human rights record. And the report took countless hours to
research, write, fact-check and publish.
I particularly want to praise the Commission's professional
staff of researchers for their expertise and skill in producing
each annual report. They do amazing work and are a valued
resource for this Commission and the entire Congress. Again,
these researchers do their work objectively. They check out
every single fact. The reporting is impeccably accurate, which
makes this report especially powerful. Again, I can't thank
them enough. Those of both parties who care about human rights
ought to recognize their incredible work.
Let me quote from author James Baldwin, in a 1979 essay. He
writes, ``Language is a political instrument, means, and proof
of power. People evolve a language in order to describe, and
thus control, their circumstances, or in order not to be
submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. And, if
they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.'' Baldwin was
writing in a different context, but his message is one that
anthropologists and political scientists confirm, that language
is the core of a people's identity.
The People's Republic of China is a multilingual society.
There are 56 official languages and hundreds more that are not
formally recognized by the state. On paper, language is
protected under Chinese law. China's constitution gives ethnic
minorities the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and
written languages and to preserve or reform their own ways and
customs. In practice, however, we are witnessing the exact
opposite. Government policies appear to promote standard
Mandarin at the expense of other languages. This is happening
as the Party under Xi Jinping imposes a coercive conformity
across all facets of society.
This trend provides the context and the central question
for this hearing. Is the Chinese government and Party
deliberately eroding the language rights of ethnic minorities
in a quest for majoritarian political control? And in so doing,
isn't the government violating rights guaranteed under China's
constitution and law? This Commission has documented protests
by Tibetans, Mongolians, and others against restrictions on
their own languages. These protests are often suppressed.
People are jailed for simply asking that their guaranteed
rights be respected.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about
the threats to the Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur languages
under PRC policies, and what this means for the concept of
ethnic autonomy. I also look forward to hearing about the
vulnerability of the hundreds of unofficial languages that also
deserve protection and preservation. So again, Mr. Chairman,
thank you for holding this hearing. I will yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Representative
McGovern.
And I'd now like to introduce our panel of witnesses.
Dr. Gerald Roche is an anthropologist who is currently a
senior research fellow at La Trobe University, a La Trobe Asia
fellow, and a co-chair of the Global Coalition for Language
Rights. His work focuses on issues of power, the state,
colonialism, and race in Asia. He has researched and written on
issues of language, oppression, racism, ethnicity,
urbanization, popular music, and community ritual in the
region.
Mr. Enghebatu Togochog is the director of the Southern
Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, a New York-based
human rights organization he established in 2001 dedicated to
protecting the rights of Mongolian people in inner Mongolia. He
is the chief editor of Southern Mongolia Watch and has
testified before the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues, the UN Forum on Minority Issues,
the UN Committee against Torture, and the European Parliament.
Ms. Lhadon Tethong is a co-founder and director of the
Tibet Action Institute. She served previously as executive
director of Students for a Free Tibet and led the campaign to
condemn China's rule of Tibet in the lead-up to the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games. Her real-time accounts of her travels
through Beijing on her blog, one of the first in the Tibetan
world, led to her detention and deportation from China.
Mr. Ayup Abduweli is a linguist, poet, and former political
prisoner, a proponent of linguistic rights, and an active
promoter of Uyghur language education. He opened language
schools and kindergartens in Xinjiang, for which he was
subjected to repeated interrogation, harassment, and eventually
a 15-month detention. After fleeing China with his family in
2015, he founded Uyghur Hjelp to document the Uyghur plight and
aid the Uyghur diaspora.
We'll now turn to our witnesses for their testimony. Five
minutes each, if you can possibly do that, starting with Dr.
Roche.
STATEMENT OF GERALD ROCHE, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, DEPARTMENT
OF POLITICS, MEDIA AND PHILOSOPHY, LA TROBE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Roche. Thank you very much. Greetings, everyone, from
the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.
Thank you sincerely for this opportunity to testify today. I
deeply appreciate the chance to share with you all some
insights into the language rights situation for people in
China. And I thank the Commission for bringing attention to
this important topic.
This topic is important because defending language rights
ensures dignity, freedom, and equality for all people. And who
among us would want to live without any of these? When people
are denied language rights, it severs their connection to their
family, community, and heritage. It excludes them from
political participation. When people are denied language rights
in vital services like healthcare, their lives are at risk, and
when they are denied language rights in education, their
futures are at risk. Millions of people in China today face
these challenges due to the state's denial of language rights.
This happens primarily in two ways, erasure and suppression.
Erasure refers to the state's refusal to acknowledge the
existence of most of China's languages by calling them
dialects. To put this in perspective, imagine if German,
English, and Norwegian were defined as dialects of a single
language. Imagine if your government told you what language you
speak. How would you feel?
In China, erasure means that from the country's 300-or-so
languages, only about 56 are recognized as languages--one for
each of the country's nationalities. Most people in China speak
unrecognized languages, whether they belong to the Han majority
or to a minority group. Most people in China are therefore
completely denied their language rights. Our research
demonstrates the catastrophic impact of this denial in Tibet.
Tibetan people in China use about 30 unrecognized languages,
not including Tibetan. People who use these unrecognized
languages face linguistic barriers everywhere--in school,
media, government, healthcare, the legal system and so on. When
the government refuses to remove these barriers, people are
forced to adapt by changing their language to either Tibetan or
Chinese.
Meanwhile, recognized languages like Uyghur, Mongolian, and
Tibetan are suppressed. Suppression happens through the gradual
dilution of the Chinese constitution's language freedoms, and
the pervasive underimplementation of protections for minority
languages. Suppression also takes place through the
encroachment of the national language, Mandarin, into spaces
for minority languages--part of a broader plan to universalize
Mandarin among the entire population. The cumulative impact of
erasure and suppression means that at least half of China's
languages are currently losing speakers or signers as they
switch to dominant languages.
In an open, democratic society, people would be lobbying
and protesting to change this unjust system. But in China,
particularly under Xi Jinping, civil society has become
increasingly repressed domestically and isolated
internationally. China's citizens will therefore be denied an
unprecedented historic opportunity to defend language rights,
namely the United Nations International Decade for Indigenous
Languages, which starts this year. China will prevent its
citizens from participating in this event because it denies
that it has indigenous people, and it denies its colonial
history. The goal of this decade is leaving no one behind and
no one outside. We have a responsibility to extend this
inclusion to people in China, to ensure they are not left out
or behind.
So here are some suggestions for how we can do this: One,
the U.S. must pressure China to clarify whether its citizens
are able to identify as indigenous and whether they can
participate in the UN Decade. And an ideal time to do this is
China's upcoming Universal Periodic Review in the UN Human
Rights Council in November 2023. Secondly, China's efforts to
isolate its citizens from international civil society need to
be countered. We must raise awareness inside China of language
rights, and of activities taking place globally during the UN
Decade.
Third, with specific regard to Tibet, earmarking funding
for Tibet's unrecognized languages will make a huge difference.
This can be done using funds allocated under the Tibetan Policy
Act. Fourth, finally, the U.S. needs to lead by example. The UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should be
formally endorsed, and its obligations respected. Failing to do
so will enable China to deflect attention from their language
rights violations and onto America's.
Thank you for listening and I welcome your questions.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Now we'll turn to Mr. Togochog.
STATEMENT OF ENGHEBATU TOGOCHOG, DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN MONGOLIAN
HUMAN RIGHTS INFORMATION CENTER
Mr. Togochog. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Co-chair, and
distinguished members of the Commission for holding this
hearing. My name is Enghebatu Togochog. I'm a Mongolian from
Southern Mongolia, also known as Inner Mongolia. What's
happening in Southern Mongolia today is what the Mongolians
regard as wholesale cultural genocide, aimed at total
eradication of Mongolian language, culture, and identity.
In 2020, responding to China's new language policy, the
Mongolians carried out a massive resistance movement. Three
hundred thousand Mongolian students went on a total school
strike. The Chinese authorities responded with massive arrests.
An estimated 8- to 10,000 protesters have been arrested,
detained, imprisoned, and placed under house arrest. Eleven
lost their lives in defense of their right to their mother
tongue.
What followed this heavyhanded crackdown was a full-scale
cultural genocide campaign, the scope of which has extended far
beyond the simple switch of languages in schools. ``Learn
Chinese and become a civilized person,'' has been an official
slogan publicly promoting Chinese supremacy. Mongolian language
programs have been removed from radio, television, and
newspapers, or replaced with a Chinese one. Students are
subjected to military-style training and must sing red songs to
extol the greatness of China. Teachers are brought to the
Communist red base Yan'an to receive patriotic education.
To justify the campaign, the Chinese National Congress
announced last year that local laws on the right to education
in minority languages are unconstitutional. The subjects of
Mongolian culture and history have been removed from the
curriculum for emphasizing Mongolian ethnic identity. All
extracurricular activities for learning Mongolian have been
banned. Mongolian traditional arts and performance have been
altered to adopt a Chinese style to reflect the superiority of
Chinese culture. Mongolian sacred sites have been taken over by
Chinese traditional art performers, and Mongolian customs and
ritual ceremonies are scorned and mocked.
Sculptures, monuments, and buildings with Mongolian
characteristics have been taken down. Signs in Mongolian have
been removed from schools, buildings, streets, and parks.
Mongolian publications are banned, books have been removed from
shelves, printing and copy services have been ordered not to
provide service or any materials written in Mongolian. Postal
and courier services are instructed not to deliver any
Mongolian books and publications.
Starting in December 2020, a regionwide training program
called Training for the Foreign Inculcation of the Chinese
Nationality Common Identity was launched. All Mongolian
students, teachers, government employees, Party members, and
ordinary herders were targeted for the training. A 47-page
pamphlet, marked as an internal document, was issued to detail
the urgency and goal of the training, and to compel Mongolians
to fully accept Chinese identity and Chinese culture. The
document also warns Mongolians that the wrong path of narrow
nationalism can lead to the return of national separatism.
The trainees told us that during the training they had to
denounce their narrow nationalism and nationalistic feeling.
They had to surrender all of their social contacts and the
details of their online activities to the authorities. They
were forced to confess their supposed mistakes, including
wearing Mongolian clothes and singing Mongolian songs. They had
to answer multiple questionnaires designed to assess their
ideological improvement. One of the questions, a trainee said,
was: How many Chinese friends do you have? Those who answered
``none'' or ``few'' had to go through further training before
they were allowed to graduate. Before their release, all
trainees signed a paper promising that they would not engage in
any activities highlighting Mongolian characteristics or
expressing Mongolian nationalistic feeling. And this is what's
happening in Southern Mongolia today.
Considering these deteriorating conditions--China's
determination to erase the Mongolian language, culture, and
identity and the lack of support from the international
community--I would like to make the following recommendations
to the United States Congress: One, conduct further hearings
and testimonies to investigate the serious human rights
violations in Southern Mongolia, in particular the ongoing
cultural genocide. Two, establish a Mongolian language
broadcast on Voice of America and/or Radio Free Asia to help
Southern Mongolians have access to the free and democratic
world. Three, introduce and pass legislation similar to the
Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and Tibetan Policy and Support
Act to support the 6,000,000 Southern Mongolians in their
effort to defend their basic human rights and fundamental
freedoms. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your testimony about
the many, many ways that Mongolian language and culture are
being impacted.
We now turn to Ms. Tethong.
STATEMENT OF LHADON TETHONG, DIRECTOR,
TIBET ACTION INSTITUTE
Ms. Tethong. Thank you, Chairman McGovern, Chairman
Merkley, members of the Committee, and CECC staff for this
opportunity.
As a Tibetan who has been working on the Sino-Tibetan
conflict for more than two decades, I can say safely it takes a
lot to shock me. But last year, when my colleagues and I began
research into reports that Tibetan children were being sent to
state-run boarding schools at an alarmingly high rate, we were
stunned by what we found. Under the cover of darkness of
China's near-total information blackout of Tibet, the Chinese
authorities have been constructing a massive colonial boarding
school system that threatens the future survival of the Tibetan
people and nation. These residential boarding schools are the
cornerstone of a broader effort to wipe out Tibetan resistance
by eliminating the three pillars of Tibetan identity--language,
religion, and way of life. The schools streamline and fast-
track this by ripping Tibetan children from their roots, by
stealing the language from their tongues, and trying to replace
their identity with Chinese identity.
In our report we find that at least 800,000 to 900,000
Tibetan children--representing nearly 80 percent of all Tibetan
children ages 6 to 18--are now separated from their families
and living in colonial boarding schools. And this number does
not include 4- and 5-years-olds being made to live in boarding
preschools. These children are forbidden from practicing
Tibetan Buddhism, they're cut off from authentic Tibetan
culture, and they're not allowed to study in their own
language. Instead, they're forced to study in Chinese, under
mostly Chinese teachers, from textbooks that represent China's
history and culture, while completely denying Tibet's own rich
and ancient history and culture. On top of this, they're
subjected to intense political indoctrination.
Most Tibetan parents have no choice but to send their
children away to these schools because China has shut down all
the village schools and nearly all the alternatives. Parents
who try to resist or refuse are threatened, harassed, fined,
and face other serious punishment. One person from Tibet
described the anguish of these separations for young children:
``I know of children aged four to five who don't want to be
separated from their mothers. They are forced to go to boarding
schools. In some cases, the children cry for days, sticking to
their mother's laps, begging not to be sent away and even
refusing to go back.''
My 5-year-old son started kindergarten this year. To think
of sending him away at this age to live apart from me for the
rest of his school-age life, to think I wouldn't be able to
comfort him or protect him day to day is devastating. And to
know China's doing this intentionally so that Tibetan children
are isolated from the influence of their parents and families
is enraging.
In the U.S., Canada, and Australia, residential boarding
schools for Native American, indigenous, and aboriginal
children are finally recognized as horrific and shameful
mistakes of the past. Now is seen as the time for inquiry,
reparations, and apologies, not as a time when any government
would be deliberately implementing this genocidal model, and on
such a massive scale. But this is exactly what Beijing is
doing. China's colonial boarding schools, together with
policies that severely restrict the use of Tibetan language,
that seek to hollow out Tibetan Buddhism and end the nomadic
way of life, threaten Tibetan existence in every space in
Tibet. What's happening in front of our eyes is the
annihilation of Tibet as a civilization, as an identity, as a
culture. It is cultural genocide. And Tibetans everywhere know
it.
Just last month, 25-year-old Tsewang Norbu, a famous
Tibetan pop star, self-immolated in front of the Potala Palace
in Lhasa. He had every reason to live. He was young,
successful, college educated. He had a family and resources.
His whole life was ahead of him and he gave it all up in the
ultimate sacrifice at the most meaningful location and
political moment for Tibetans, on the eve of the anniversary of
the 1959 Tibetan national uprising. His life and lyrics suggest
he did this because he wanted to send a message that no matter
what personal success we may achieve, what matters most is our
roots, our homeland, our culture, and our freedom to live on
our own land and be who we are.
Tsewang Norbu's final act illuminates a simple truth that's
held strong in Tibet for 70 years under Chinese occupation--
that generation after generation, Tibetans have shown that
their love and allegiance is to Tibet, to the mountains, to the
grasslands, to our mother tongue, our great sages, and
spiritual teachers and leaders, most especially to His Holiness
the 14th Dalai Lama, and not to China. Because Tibetans are not
Chinese.
Though Tibetans and Tibet continue to battle courageously
against China's onslaught, they can't do it alone. They need
people and governments in the free world to step up, and there
is so much more that can be done. I think global opposition to
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shown us how much the
international community can do. We need to use every tool
available to fight these genocidal dictators, because a state
that so blatantly flouts international rules and norms, and
indeed actively seeks to undermine them, threatens us all. The
fate of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southern Mongolians, Hong Kongers,
and Taiwanese affects us all.
I'll end my remarks here and save my specific
recommendations for the Q&A. Also I'd like to submit our report
on China's colonial boarding school system in Tibet for the
record. Thank you very much.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. Without objection, it will be
submitted for the record.
Now we'll turn to Mr. Abduweli.
STATEMENT OF AYUP ABDUWELI,
UYGHUR WRITER AND LINGUIST
Mr. Abduweli. Thank you all for giving me this opportunity.
Let me start with the historical narrative. After Chinese
Communist rule, the Uyghur language faced difficulty--first,
the Uyghur alphabet was revised. That meant that after 1949,
Uyghurs could not read what their ancestors had written. For
example, I cannot read what my grandpa had written in Uyghur.
And second, in 1956, the Chinese government changed the Uyghur
alphabet to Cyrillic and then we had another period of
illiteracy and people could not read after five years--after
1940. In 1962, the Uyghur alphabet changed a third time, to
Chinese phonetic Pinyin, like the Latin alphabet. And it was
used until 1979. And then in 1982 it changed again. Since 1949,
Uyghurs have experienced the alphabet changing four times. That
means that we had millions of people becoming illiterate
because of this alphabet changing.
Since 1982, our alphabet hasn't been changed, but our
orthography, our spelling system, changed a lot--five times--
and it gave people a lot of trouble, and you could not
communicate with the written language because of this. In 1997,
the Uyghur language started to be restricted, and in 2002, the
Uyghur language was removed from higher education--from
university, community college, and technology college. Uyghur
was removed and replaced by Han Chinese in the education
system. Because of this, in 2006, Uyghur intellectuals in
Urumqi started the campaign to restore the legal rights of
Uyghurs. This peaceful campaign ended up with one Uyghur
sentenced to 12 years, Memtimin Elyar, and more than 10 Uyghurs
were sentenced to different terms.
In 2011, I started my mother language campaign. I had my
mother language kindergarten and because of this, I was
arrested on August 19, 2013. I spent 428 days in a Chinese
detention center. And I was questioned, interrogated more than
six months, and forced to ``confess'' that my goal in this
mother language campaign was to separate from China and build
an independent Uyghur country. I was sexually abused and
experienced six months of torture. I spent 428 days without
sunshine and without an appropriate toilet and without any
healthcare.
Since 2017, the Chinese policy against Uyghurs has totally
worsened. Uyghurs were totally banned from public life. Uyghur
textbooks were collected and burned in front of the students,
and Uyghur textbook editors were arrested. According to Uyghur
Hjelp documentation, about 400 Uyghur writers who participated
in editing these Uyghur textbooks got arrested. And 1,000
mother language teachers got arrested. Among them is my friend,
Ehmetjan Jume, sentenced to 14 years. And three Uyghur
intellectuals were sentenced to life imprisonment, and one was
sentenced to death. His name is Sattar Sawut.
Second, Han Chinese officials were assigned to every Uyghur
family so Uyghurs speak Chinese at home and have their cultural
practices monitored. And third, Uyghur kids were displaced from
their homes and forced to study at boarding school. According
to Adrian Zenz, there are more than 900,000 Uyghur kids in
boarding school right now. As we know, up to 3,000,000 Uyghurs
are in concentration camps and their kids are in special kids'
camps.
I met two of them, because they are Turkish citizens, and
they were saved by the Turkish government. I met them in
Istanbul in December 2011. When I asked, they had forgotten
their language in two years. They were arrested in March 2017
and released in December 2019. In two years they totally forgot
their mother language. At the time of their arrest, the younger
one was four years old. The other one was six years old. In two
years they forgot their language 100 percent. And we can
imagine that up to 3,000,000 Uyghurs are in concentration camps
and their kids are in kids' camp--so-called boarding school.
And we can imagine what happened to those kids.
Uyghur kids, displaced from their homeland. For example, my
niece, Saeda, was displaced from her home and from her
homeland. Now she is studying in a Chinese boarding school in a
Chinese-majority city, not at home. And Uyghur kids are forced
to separate from their family and study and live in boarding
kindergarten. According to Adrian Zenz, since 2017, boarding
kindergarten in the Uyghur region increased more than 100
times. It's increasing very, very, very quickly. Fifth, Uyghur
kids are sent to kindergarten in inland China, not in Uyghur
East Turkestan. It's really dangerous and it means that we
cannot find where they are in the end because they are
submerged in Chinese society.
It's really dangerous, especially the kindergarten in
Xi'an. We don't know whether they are orphans or not. Maybe
their parents are in concentration camps. They're sent to
Chinese orphanages. Uyghur kids in kindergarten are not allowed
to speak Uyghur. A social media video I received said that the
teacher asked the kid's name and the kid said, ``I am not
allowed to tell my name in Uyghur. I have to tell my name in
Chinese.'' Those kids cannot even tell their name in their
mother tongue because of fear.
I waited to give this testimony for more than five years.
Thank you, everyone, for giving me this opportunity. And I
think we need to take urgent action, especially for those
innocent kids who are separated from their family, who are
separated from their homeland, who are separated from their
culture. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your powerful
testimony.
The Senate is holding a vote on a required timeline, so I'm
going to turn this over to Co-chair Representative McGovern. I
hope to be back, but it's a little uncertain. It may be back-
to-back votes. I just want to note especially the testimony
about the combination of the assault on use of the language and
ripping children out of their family's arms to separate them,
change the language, change the culture. It's an abomination.
And you all have made that very clear today, about the
extensive use both in the Uyghur communities and Mongolian
communities and Tibetan communities. Thank you. I hope to
return, but if not I turn this over to Representative McGovern.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much. And I want to thank
all the witnesses for your testimony. Let me begin with Mr.
Togochog. In your testimony you advocate for the creation of a
Mongolian language service through Voice of America and Radio
Free Asia. As I understand it, Voice of America has currently,
or in the past, broadcast in some 80 languages, but never
Mongolian. Can you expand on what a Mongolian VOA service would
mean for Southern Mongolians?
Mr. Togochog. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question.
Neither Voice of America nor Radio Free Asia has any Mongolian
service at this moment. And I don't think in the past they have
ever had it either. So having a Mongolian service would be very
helpful for the Southern Mongolians because the Mongolians do
not have any channel or any way to communicate with the free
and democratic world. Their situation, their conditions, are
largely underreported.
And so if we have a program, a broadcast service, it will
help them to understand what's going on in the free and
democratic world, and at the same time also it will allow them
to have their voice heard by the international community and
expose the human rights violations that are happening in
Southern Mongolia, in particular the ongoing cultural genocide
that is aiming at the complete erasure of Mongolian language,
culture, and identity.
Co-chair McGovern. I appreciate that. And that's, I think,
a helpful suggestion and it's something we should explore in
the upcoming appropriations process.
Ms. Tethong, your testimony references the troubling
experience in the United States, Canada, and Australia with
residential boarding schools for indigenous children. Can you
speak to your perspective as a native of Canada on how the
Canadian experience can help us view what you report about
boarding schools in Tibet in terms of accountability,
restitution, and social justice?
Ms. Tethong. Thank you. I think it was one of the most
disturbing parts of what we were doing when we were researching
and writing this report, that a number of us on the team of
Tibet actually were Canadian. The unmarked graves of First
Nation children were being uncovered in Canada from the
residential schools there as we were writing this report, and
it was haunting for all of us. It also gave us a great sense of
urgency to get this story out. Not that they're exactly the
same situation, but that it's happening again in another place
in a slightly different way, but the intent is the same.
I think for us, you know, the key right now is that people
don't know that this is happening, because the Chinese have so
effectively blocked information from leaving Tibet. They've
scared people from saying what's happening on the ground. And
they are hiding what they're doing. But the Chinese government
cares what the world thinks, and this is why they have all of
these hidden policies in Tibet. It's so that they can avoid
international scrutiny. The boarding preschools or
kindergartens for 4- and 5-year-olds, they're actively hiding
their existence. We know there are preschools and kindergartens
that are day schools. And we see those on Chinese state
propaganda. But the actual boarding preschools they're actively
hiding.
We know that the key right now is to expose and condemn
directly and openly. We need the U.S. Government to do that.
That is the beginning. That's where we start. We need the U.S.
Government to work with like-minded governments around the
world to put a spotlight on this issue and to say it's
unacceptable and that these children need to be returned to
their parents and they need to have access to high-quality
mother tongue education in their local areas, just like any of
us who grew up in free and open societies do, no matter how
rural or whatever the challenges may be. I think it's important
to note that in China itself the rate of students even in rural
areas who are in boarding schools is drastically lower.
Tibetans are boarding at five times the rate, in the case of
one primary school comparison that we did in central Tibet
alone, in what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region.
I think the other thing that we need is to see--you know,
the world has collectively condemned residential school policy,
the practice of separating children from their parents in order
to influence, to change who they are, to erase their culture
and identity. And we need to see that the UN speaks out on
this, that Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, breaks her silence on Tibet. She hasn't even said
``Tibet'' since 2018, when she took up this mandate. So we need
member states, we need the U.S. Government to push for
accountability also at the UN.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. You know, I was on a
delegation with Speaker Pelosi, I think it was back in 2015,
when the Chinese government actually allowed us to go into
Lhasa and tried to micromanage and control every single moment
of that visit. But despite all of those efforts, we were amazed
and, quite frankly, inspired by Tibetans who approached us to
talk about, among other things, the importance of their
language, the importance of their culture, the importance of
giving their children a future in which the language and
culture were a reality. This is their identity. This is who
they are. And it was a trip that, on the one hand, was
depressing and shocking because of the Chinese government's
repressive behavior, but on the other hand, inspiring and
motivating because people, at great risk, found ways to
communicate with us directly. And, you know, I will never,
ever, ever forget it. And thank you for your response.
Dr. Roche, many of us assume there is a single Tibetan
language, but you testify to the diversity of languages spoken
by Tibetans. And I appreciate the map that you provided us.
Would a person from Lhasa be able to communicate with a person
from the Dalai Lama's hometown of Amdo?
Mr. Roche. Yes, thank you very much for that question. Just
to answer that part very quickly, it depends on who those
people were. There's a great difference between the spoken
languages between Lhasa and the far-northern Amdo. If two
people met on the street, chances are that they would not be
able to communicate. But if they were educated in the common
written language, if they had the experience communicating with
Tibetans from a wide variety of backgrounds, then they would
probably be able to communicate. There's flexibility around
that issue.
But those are two examples of what linguists call Tibetic
languages, which means that they are varieties of Tibetan.
There are also about a quarter of a million Tibetans that use
languages which are much more different than those--a group of
Tibetic languages that are vastly different from each other.
Regardless of whether they were literate, regardless of how
cosmopolitan they were, regardless of the amount of exposure,
and without concerted study, they would not be able to
communicate with one another. To give an example that might
help, it would be as different as Swedish and Italian, for
example.
Most of the Tibetans who speak those languages, their
communities are quite small, several thousand people among a
broader population of over 6,000,000 people. And given the
situation that I've described, where the state completely
denies language rights in any forum--in education, healthcare,
media, governance, etc.--those languages are facing a very
serious predicament.
In terms of thinking through these issues that we're
talking about today, about the impact of the denial of language
rights, thinking about the state's goals and their thinking
about the program of sinicization, and so on, we can think of
these smaller languages spoken by Tibetans as the canary in the
coal mine. They point in the direction of where the actions of
the state are going for other languages.
What we see across all of those languages is people
switching away from them. They're no longer transmitting those
languages to their children. So, in an expert survey that I did
of linguists who work in this area, I asked their assessment of
whether those languages would still be spoken in future
generations. And the answer was, in almost every case, that
they would no longer be, that the children would be switching
either to some form of Chinese or some form of Tibetan
language.
Co-chair McGovern. Yes, and I'm technologically challenged,
but for those who are watching this, I mean, this is the map
that you provided us [holds up map]. All of these different
colors show all the different distinct Tibetan languages and
dialects, which I think is fascinating, something that we don't
always appreciate, when we're talking about protecting a
language.
How would an understanding of this linguistic diversity
help the U.S. protect the Tibetan language? And you made a
recommendation earlier, but maybe you can expand on it--how
funding of the Tibetan Policy and Support Act could be used.
Mr. Roche. Yes, thank you for that question.
These languages face a very intense predicament. The
speakers of these languages--also the people who sign them,
because we should include Tibetan Sign Language here, as well--
these communities have no support from anywhere. They want to
maintain these languages. They--in instances where they can--
create projects to support these languages--educational
initiatives, community chances to use the language, and so on.
One of the most clear examples of the desire to use these
languages was seen when the COVID pandemic broke in Tibet, and
no public healthcare information was available to these
communities in the languages that they understood best and
which they trusted the most, as well. And so that was creating
great anxiety and putting those people at risk, so they
initiated these community public health information translation
projects on their own, without any funding, without any
support, and so on.
So the recommendation that I make--given that the Tibetan
Policy and Support Act in part focuses on the protection of
Tibetan language and culture--is the idea that funds could be
earmarked specifically for these languages. And that money
could be used, for example, to transmit information to those
communities about language rights--the fact that they have
them; how those language rights are denied. If it were possible
to get money to the communities on the ground, to work with
them, there are all sorts of projects that could be done to
help those communities use their languages, develop them--for
example, develop writing systems, recording the languages,
helping develop vocabulary to use in new situations.
And there are ample examples all around the world of
different projects, different methods, for helping to support
the language that some of this funding could be used for, and
that Tibetan communities inside China could learn from.
Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you. And you know--I know
USAID has money for this, and I think maybe we need to work
with USAID to find a grantee that could actually do what you're
talking about.
I have other questions here--I'm not sure if Congresswoman
Steel is still on the line.
Representative Steel. Yes.
Co-chair McGovern. OK. I want to yield to you for your
questions. And I'll come back to me.
Representative Steel. Thank you, Co-chair McGovern. And
thank you very much to all the witnesses.
It is alarming and disheartening that the CCP is working to
restrict religious freedom and trying to eradicate entire
cultures. The CCP is separating children from their parents,
home, and community--I can't even imagine it. This is one more
outrageous example of racism and troubling human rights
violations at the hands of the CCP.
Having said that, Ms. Lhadon Tethong--if I pronounce it
wrong, I'm sorry--but you mentioned that the private schools
run by monasteries and Tibetan communities have been shut down
by the CCP. We already heard Mr. Togochog's recommendations of
what the United States Congress can do, but what can global
leaders do to stop this violation? I tried to let the whole
world know during the Olympics what China has been doing, but I
didn't get any response from the Olympic corporate sponsors
who've been spending billions of dollars. So could you tell us
what global leaders have to do to stop this violation?
Ms. Tethong. Yes, I think the key is--and we can see this
happening more and more--for like-minded governments, global
leaders, to work together and to coordinate strategies and
approaches in a way that really targets--for example, the case
of sanctions. I think this whole area, you know, unlike, say,
targeting military or security people, officials, the area of
education policy just seems--it's such a different target. But
there are Chinese academics and education policy experts who
are conceptualizing and they're operationalizing these
programs--that are separating nearly a million Tibetan children
from their parents, and that are essentially threatening that
an entire generation of Tibetans, and those that come from now
on, will not speak Tibetan.
So they are designing these genocidal policies and
overseeing them, and they should be targeted, I think, for
sanctions and other things. And governments can coordinate, I
believe, to do that in a way that--perhaps, you know, the
security officials and the top, top officials aren't so
concerned about their international reputation, or their
travel, or whatever. But academics are. I mean, that's so much
of what it's about--reputation, and your international
credibility. And I think this group of people, who are playing
key roles in all of this, the rollout and the separation of
very young children from their families, they play a key role.
And if we want to sort of change behavior and send a very clear
message, I think they should absolutely be targeted with
sanctions.
Representative Steel. Very essential. Thank you very much.
So parents, not the CCP, have the right to choose how their
child will be educated. That's what we are practicing here; we
try to. Why is the CCP so threatened by having a diverse
community? Ms. Tethong.
Ms. Tethong. I think the key is difference, that because
Tibetans are not Chinese, because Uyghurs are not Chinese,
Southern Mongolians--we have our distinct histories, our
distinct national histories. This is about wiping out
resistance to Chinese Communist Party rule.
And all of the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party in
Tibet over 70 years have failed. All of the violence--you think
of their economic, their political, their military power and
might, and somehow, Tibetans are still resisting, and a whole
new generation of Tibetans that has no memory of a free Tibet,
is still fighting. And that's because who we are at our core is
not Chinese.
When Tibetans are being taught only about Chinese history
and culture in this intense nationalistic curriculum, they know
that they're not reflected there. Maybe it takes a littler kid
some time to figure that out, but in the end, Tibetans know
they're not Chinese. And when they leave these schools, or when
they go out into the world, they face such incredible racism
and discrimination that their instinct, of course, is to turn
inward and to ask questions about who they are and where Tibet
is in all of this.
And so I think this is about wiping out resistance to
Chinese Communist Party rule in places where the Party rules
with a colonial occupation, where the Chinese government has
taken over by force and maintains control by force. And
parents' influence needs to be--I guess, they believe--broken.
You know, these children, if they're removed from their
parents, their families, and their communities, if they can
forget who they are, maybe that resistance will end. And I
think they're sadly mistaken.
Congresswoman Steel. Thank you very much.
And for Mr. Abduweli, you know, both my parents fled from
North Korean communism during the Korean War, so you know, I've
been hearing so much about the Communists. And now I am a proud
American immigrant who is living her American dream. I speak
Korean and Japanese as my first and second language, and
English is my third. It is important to embrace diversity and
to respect other cultures. I speak common greetings to my
constituents and friends on a daily basis. Why is the CCP
creating new language restrictions and engaging in religious
persecution? What are they afraid of?
Mr. Abduweli. I think it's mainly because Uyghurs keep
protecting their language. Especially after July 5th--we had a
demonstration in 2009, on July 5th. And after the
demonstration, thousands of people got arrested. And after
that, the Chinese government changed the policy a little bit
and gave some economic benefits to the people.
But at that time, I witnessed what happened, and for
example, Uyghur books flourished, and Uyghur films flourished,
and Uyghur poetry sold very well. Despite this economic
benefit, however, Uyghurs were not fooled. Instead, Uyghurs
increased in power, because of the economic development and
people decided to keep the language alive, keep that language.
And they used their money to support it.
And when I started my mother language kindergarten,
investment was already enough. I had enough investment, and I
had enough support. At that time, we had--when we started our
campaign online, we had 500,000 followers online to support us.
So I think the main reason is because of this power--
because of this power of identity, power of culture. They are
afraid of this.
Representative Steel. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
I think Chairman Merkley is back.
Chair Merkley. I'm back and thank you very much. And I'll
apologize in advance if I ask questions that others have
already asked, but maybe they're worth reemphasizing.
And let me start with the depiction of a strategy by the
Chinese government to universalize Mandarin among the entire
population of China. Do you all agree--I'll just ask each of
you to comment very briefly--do you all agree that getting
everyone to speak Mandarin is the ultimate goal of the
sinicization campaign that we've all talked about today?
Dr. Roche, you want to kick that off?
Mr. Roche. Sure. Yes, I think it is. This is the goal--the
policy has been in place for a while now. The plan has been
set. The targets have been announced and shifted year by year.
They target different regions as it progresses, and the aim is
to have everyone speaking Mandarin, regardless of the cost to
other languages, people's identities, communities, families,
etc.
Chair Merkley. OK. Does everyone else agree? Maybe just
speak very briefly to that, to basically wipe out every other
language except Mandarin Chinese, over the course of the next
couple of decades?
Mr. Togochog.
Mr. Togochog. Yes, thank you.
Yes, their goal is very clear. The Chinese authorities are
stating their goals very publicly. And they are saying all the
so-called 55 ethnic minorities must adopt and embrace the
Chinese Zhongguo nationality, or Chinese nationality--that's
the stated goal.
And eliminating language and forcing all those 55 ethnic
minorities to speak Chinese is not the only goal. Actually,
their ultimate goal is to turn these peoples' identities into
the Chinese, or Zhongguo, nationality, identity.
Chair Merkley. So, it's both about everyone speaking
Mandarin, but the underlying goal is to wipe out the ethnic
identity of people across China, basically genocide against
dozens and dozens of the diverse cultures of the country.
Ms. Tethong, when you look at the strategies being used,
including this absolutely horrific separation of small children
from their families to boarding schools--I think you said 80
percent of the children are separated, about 800,000 to 900,000
children, if I got those numbers right. So do you see a path in
which China, the Chinese government, is seeking to essentially
wipe out the Tibetan language within another generation?
Ms. Tethong. Yes, absolutely. And I think the focus now on
kindergartens or preschoolers, the focus on 4- and 5-year-olds,
really shows us that. These children are learning entirely from
such a young age, entirely in Chinese, or Mandarin. And they
are so young. They're also being taught--their psychological
foundation will be sort of trained to think about Chinese
culture . . . because they don't live with their parents and
their families for the majority of their lives. Even if they're
just living five days a week in these schools, the idea is to
really change them on the inside, who they are fundamentally,
so as to wipe out resistance.
Chair Merkley. It's so much more than simply language.
Mr. Abduweli, do you also see the Chinese goal being to
wipe out the Uyghur language within a generation?
Mr. Abduweli. Yes, the Chinese goal is, I think, not only
to wipe out the Uyghur language, but also to make Uyghurs
become, not modern Chinese, but make them become ancient
Chinese. From my documentation, those Uyghur kids in camps,
they're forced to recite ancient Chinese texts, not the modern
texts, and they force them to wear ancient Chinese clothes, not
modern Chinese clothes, and make them recite things not
relevant to this modern society. And I think the ultimate goal
is, make them more Chinese than ordinary Chinese.
Chair Merkley. So Mr. Togochog, you observed that in
January of last year--about 15 months ago--Chinese authorities
announced that the legal protections for recognized minority
languages are unconstitutional. Of course, it's the
constitution, Article 4 of the Chinese constitution, that
provides for those protections.
So, can we essentially say that the Chinese constitution
has been invalidated by the Chinese government, and that the
protection in Article 4 of the Chinese constitution no longer
exists?
Mr. Togochog. Well, that's correct. As we all know, China
is not a country of the rule of law. So yes, the Chinese
constitution is still there. But at the same time, because of
the Mongolian--the large-scale protests, they came up with the
idea that--actually, the Chinese National Congress announced
that all the local laws, including the ethnic minority autonomy
laws and some other regulations on the minority languages, in
particular the Mongolian language, are unconstitutional. And
then they said, these must be changed. So that's their
statement.
So, the goal is clear. They just use whatever method
available to just completely wipe out the Mongolian language.
And so in this effort, they even invalidate their own
constitution.
Chair Merkley. And Mr. Abduweli, my time is running short,
so this will be my last question. You note in your testimony
that in 2013, there was a movement among Uyghurs to adopt this
slogan: If the Chinese constitution protects our language, then
it is our turn to protect it. So it's like, OK, hey, the
constitution is our protection; let's protect locally--and
ensure that Article 4 is followed.
But the Chinese reaction was to essentially say, no, the
constitution doesn't really--we're throwing that out. So, your
effort to seize upon those constitutional protections was,
unfortunately, unsuccessful. Is that a fair way to put it?
Mr. Abduweli. Yes, that's correct. That's our slogan, and
that's my--I tried to follow the law, and I tried to practice
my constitutional rights. But in the end, I didn't succeed.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you all very much. This big
picture--China has abandoned its constitutional protections;
it's wiping out languages. It's not just language; it's trying
to wipe out the minority cultures across China, and that's the
big picture I want to keep coming back to.
Senator Ossoff.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
Congressman McGovern, as well. And to our panelists--I've got
to briefly run into another meeting, so I'm going to cut right
to the chase, and just ask each of our panelists the following
question: Can you please share your analysis of how the CCP's
increased repression of ethnic minorities within China fits
into its broader long-term strategy for consolidation of
political control?
Go ahead, Mr. Abduweli.
Mr. Abduweli. Could you rephrase your question? I'm sorry.
Senator Ossoff. No problem. My question is, how does the
continued and increased repression of ethnic minorities by the
Chinese Communist Party fit into the CCP's broader long-term
political and state strategy?
Mr. Abduweli. Yes, in Xi Jinping's speech made in 2014 in
Urumqi, he used one very specific term, ``break the root.'' It
means break this culture, separate. Implementing this for
boarding school, and boarding kindergarten and those things--
implementation of his order to break the root means that those
kids have their homes, their homeland, and their culture
replaced.
Xi Jinping also stressed Zhongguo identity. That's the only
identity allowed in China. And that's why the Chinese
government had these concentration camps and forced millions of
people to speak Chinese in those so-called vocational centers.
And third, the Chinese government transferred the Uyghurs
from their own homeland to Chinese cities. In 2020 alone, more
than 50,000 Uyghurs were transferred to Xinjiang. The ultimate
goal is not only to force them to speak Chinese but have them
disappear into the Chinese majority of the Chinese mainland.
Mr. Togochog. If I may--can I respond to Senator Ossoff's
question?
What's happening in China is a continuation of what China
has been implementing in these three nations. Especially in the
Mongolian case, the new policy, new cultural genocide policy,
followed by the so-called second-generation bilingual
education, is considered by the Mongolians to be the final step
of China's overall cultural genocide policy that is intended to
systematically destroy the language, tradition, and identity of
the Mongolian people as a whole.
If you look at the history of the past 73 years, the
history of Southern Mongolia, as early as the late 1940s, even
before the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the
Chinese Communist Party took over Southern Mongolia and
implemented the so-called land reform movement. And then they
executed tens of thousands of Mongolians and confiscated their
land.
Then in the 1950s, the Mongolian elite intellectuals were
persecuted. And then in 1960 and 1970, for example, there was a
large-scale genocide campaign, actually. In this campaign, at
least 100,000 Mongolians were tortured to death, and half a
million persecuted. At that time, the Mongolian population was
only 1.5 million. That means that one-third of the population
was affected by this policy.
Then in 2001, the Chinese government implemented another
set of policies to wipe out the Mongolian traditional way of
life. The policies are called ecological migration, with a
total ban on our grazing lifestyle. Under this policy, the
Mongolian traditional way of life is targeted. Mongolian
herders who graze their animals on their own land are
considered criminals. And now they are targeting Mongolian
language.
This is a continuing pattern. The recent policy is not just
an isolated policy. It's a continuation of overall Chinese
policy to destroy the entire nation of Southern Mongolia.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Togochog.
Ms. Tethong. If I may, Senator Ossoff----
Senator Ossoff. Please, go ahead.
Ms. Tethong. I agree completely. I think this is the
continuation of destructive policies, and an intention to--
really, Xi Jinping has just completely accelerated this
genocidal project in Tibet and East Turkestan and Southern
Mongolia. I think we can see that, with the Chinese Communist
Party, Xi Jinping, there can be no challenge to their
authority. And that's what Tibetans and Uyghurs and Southern
Mongolians do by trying to maintain our distinct way of life,
our language, our separate national identities.
If you look at China's threatening of Taiwan, if you look
at the crackdown in Hong Kong, if you look at the attack on
India, I think we can see that it doesn't end with--it's not
like it's just about Tibetans or Uyghurs, what China considers
its internal issues. It goes well beyond.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have imperial
ambitions. I mean, there is a belief that they have the right
to rule over us, on their borders, and that they should have a
greater position of power in the world--should have more
influence at whatever cost and to wipe out dissent and to
attack people fundamentally, who people are, to try to destroy
or erase us.
We can see with Russia right now under Putin the threat
that Russia poses to global peace and security. I believe it is
the same with the Chinese government, and I think no matter
what their propaganda says--trust us, they're very, very good
at using benign-sounding, positive language to mask their
intentions, but we know the truth of what they want to do, and
they're doing it to us in a way the whole world can see. And I
think that's why it's imperative on some level--it's also self-
interest, I think, globally to help to try to push China back
to stop these genocides that are happening before our eyes--
because it doesn't just stop here, I don't think.
Mr. Roche. If I may just expand on some of those points
there. With reference to particularly the groups that I've
worked with--I call these unrecognized languages, unrecognized
groups, in terms of state and political strategy. Originally
when these policies were formed several decades ago, the aim of
not recognizing those groups--and it was a deliberate process--
the aim of that was to accelerate their assimilation. The idea
was that those unrecognized groups would assimilate into the
recognized 56 nationalities and then all of those groups would
assimilate into a single, basically Han Chinese socialist
unity. So, it was a deliberate strategy to speed up social
evolution toward the socialist future, which would also
coincidentally be Han Chinese.
And so when those structures were put in place--those
structures of recognition, the legal structures, constitutional
freedom for language, the policies of ethnic autonomy and so
on--they were all done with an aim to deliberately drive
assimilatory processes, and they have been working as planned
for decades now. And we see that in the fate of these
unrecognized languages, which people are no longer basically
able to transmit to their children or can only do so with great
difficulty.
Under Xi Jinping, in particular, that goal of accelerating
assimilation has taken on goals which are primarily related to
China's place on the global stage. It's taken on a geopolitical
significance. Those structures that accelerate assimilation are
now driving toward producing greater unity, integration, and
therefore power that will accelerate China's place in the world
order, which--you know, the aim is an ascendant China with a
much broader, more important, powerful role on the world stage,
and that place on the world stage will be built on the
deliberate destruction of these communities.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, all. Thank you for your
testimony. And thank you to our co-chairs.
I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
And Co-chair McGovern, did you want to ask a second set of
questions?
Co-chair McGovern. Yes, briefly.
Dr. Roche, you speak of the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples as a mechanism for indigenous peoples of
China to defend their languages. You say that the U.S. should
formally endorse the non-binding declaration, as the three
other countries who initially voted against it--Canada, the
U.K., and Australia--have done. Would endorsement give our
government a stronger moral position to urge China to allow its
citizens to participate in the UN process?
Mr. Roche. Yes, it absolutely would give the U.S. a
stronger moral foundation for making these claims against
China. We see this repeatedly--that when these issues are
raised against China, whether it's in diplomatic or
governmental forums or whether it's in the media or social
media, that whenever these accusations are brought against
China--about what they're actually doing, the first strategy
that they always go to is one of deflection--to deflect the
query back on the accuser and to say, you have no right to
accuse us of this when you yourself have done it in your past,
you are doing it now, etc., etc.
Then they often go to other strategies of outright denial,
conditional denial, and so on and so on, but the first
rhetorical strategy is always to deflect the comment back on
the accuser, and anything that can be done in that regard will
prove the effectiveness of any efforts to hold China
accountable for what they are doing--these assimilatory,
eliminatory programs. Hopefully, that clarifies it for you.
Co-chair McGovern. It does. Thank you. And thank you for
being with us this--I don't know what time it is--what time is
it where you are?
Mr. Roche. It's after midnight now. We started at midnight.
Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you. We appreciate you
staying up for us here. Thank you.
Ms. Tethong, regarding the residential boarding school
system in Tibetan areas, can you expand a little bit on the
elements of coercion? I mean, do authorities order families to
send their kids away? Do they make it a fait accompli by
closing local schools or is it something else? And how would we
find out more information about the schools for 4- and 5-year-
olds, which you say Chinese authorities are trying to hide?
Ms. Tethong. Thank you for your question, Chairman
McGovern.
Yes, the Chinese government is making it impossible for
Tibetan parents to do anything but comply both because of the
consolidation of schools--closing all the local schools, all
the alternatives, the monastery schools, the Tibetan-run
private schools. So Tibetans on the one hand have no choice in
most places. If they want their children to get an education,
they have to send them away. At the same time, parents do, of
course, resist and refuse, and when they do, they are
threatened. They can be threatened with financial punishment.
The number one thing is, if you don't send your child now, say,
to boarding preschool, then they won't be able to go and join
later--at grade one or in primary school.
And so Tibetan parents are really left--and Tibetans know--
anyone under Chinese Communist Party rule knows you don't
disagree, you don't push back--to do so in any meaningful way
will be considered a threat to the state and you'll be charged
or could be held accountable for some serious political
charges, even though all you're trying to do is keep your child
at home where you can protect them and watch over them.
I know with the boarding preschools--we're really working
to try to understand more about the picture on the ground, and
we need governments and everyone to be asking China about the
boarding preschools. We've been hearing reports recently that
Tibetan parents don't want their kids to go to these schools.
They don't want to send them away so young. When they have to--
like in nomadic communities, we've been hearing that one
nomadic family will move to the township and live in their car
to be near the kids that are in that boarding preschool, and
the other families back home will take care of their work and
their business. And families will take turns.
It's having a very, very detrimental effect on the life of
nomads and rural people to have such small children taken away,
and then, of course, the things parents try to do just like in
Canada in the residential school history there, just like in
the U.S. You know, when these children are taken away, parents
try to go and be near them or do what they can to protect them
because they're being taken out of their hands. And we need to
know more. China needs to answer and tell us what the numbers
are. Just trying to piece together this picture from Chinese
state media, from Chinese government sources at every level,
from Chinese academics and other academic studies--it really is
an incredible challenge, and that's absolutely intentional on
the part of the Chinese government to hide this--because they
know it's wrong.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
I apologize, I have to go to another meeting, but before I
yield back to Chairman Merkley, let me just thank this
incredible panel. You know, this is an important issue. It goes
to the issue of identity. It goes to the issue of China trying
to wipe out an entire culture.
I think, Ms. Tethong, you had mentioned that one of the
reasons they do this is to try to quash resistance. On the
other hand, I could make an argument that their repression and
their trying to rob people of their identity, I think only
increases resistance in the sense that people are just
horrified that there is an entity that wants to rob them of
their identity, of their history, of their culture, of their
language.
As some people have said on this panel, it's really
important for us to be able to fund initiatives that will
actually protect these languages and to find ways to allow
people to have access to appropriate instruction to be able to
pass this on to the next generations.
But you have given us some important ideas on things that
we need to do in the upcoming appropriations process that will
be coming up in a matter of weeks and also some follow-up
questions for the Chinese government.
This has been an excellent panel, and I want to thank you
all.
I yield back to Chairman Merkley.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
I have some additional questions I'll continue with. Let me
start, Dr. Roche, with the question as to whether the Chinese
government is also trying to wipe out or start the process of
eliminating the Cantonese dialect in favor of the Mandarin
dialect?
Mr. Roche. Thank you for that question. I'll just give a
very brief answer because this is not my specific area of
research. I haven't done work in this area, so my understanding
of it is from a very broad, general background.
Basically, in terms of policy, the same policy of erasure
applies, which is that there is limited-to-no formal support
for the Cantonese language. A lot of the support is ad hoc and
superficial, which then makes it very difficult for the
community to sustain their language. We know that in the past
there have been protests against the imposition of Mandarin in
the Cantonese-speaking communities, and interestingly, the
protests seem to have had a knock-on effect in Tibet--in part
inspiring language protests there, emboldening people.
I think that that's an important thing to note, that all of
these language contexts are connected. When one group is able
to stand up and defend their language, if that information is
available to other people and they know that, that emboldens
them, it encourages them, it reminds them of their rights and
so on, which is important.
But beyond that, I would not like to comment further on the
situation of the Cantonese language because I feel I don't have
the adequate expertise.
Chair Merkley. Are all of the university admissions in
Mandarin, all of the university exams?
Mr. Roche. Across the entire country or just in the
Cantonese context?
Chair Merkley. Across the entire country.
Mr. Roche. Again, I don't think that I have the up-to-date
information on that. I'll pass that over to--perhaps one of the
other panelists would know. I haven't been able to enter China,
so my on-the-ground access to information is now limited,
unfortunately.
Chair Merkley. So for each of you, in regard to Mongolia,
Tibet, the Uyghur autonomous region, are all the university
examinations in Mandarin?
Mr. Abduweli. Yes, they are, and we had Uyghur exams until
2017, and since then, all college entrance exams are in
Chinese.
Mr. Togochog. In Mongolian areas, yes, now all college
exams are--they have to be in Chinese, and then, there was
until recently--until this new policy, there was a very limited
number of colleges that had some majors in Mongolian. For
example, a Mongolian literature and linguistics major was--the
students were allowed to take the exam in Mongolian, but now
all this is changing. All students have to take the exam in
Chinese.
Chair Merkley. Ms. Tethong.
Ms. Tethong. Yes, I believe that's true, and it's important
to point out that the pressure on Tibetan society and on the
language and culture is coming from both sides. The children--
the youngest children are having the language stolen from them,
and those in higher academic study are suddenly not able to--so
they amalgamated the different departments. There used to be
Tibetan studies and Mongolian studies and Uyghur studies, and
under the common language policy, they sort of put everyone
together, and the only way to teach is in Mandarin because
Tibetans will not speak Uyghur and Uyghurs will not speak
Tibetan.
There have been Tibetan academics and education specialists
who have been working hard for decades to try to promote
Tibetan language and Tibetan curriculum and cultural content
and everything, and suddenly, all of them are faced with no
options to continue with their work. And the Tibetan language
itself--I mean, as one Tibetan education policy expert from
Tibet who was raised during the Cultural Revolution told us
recently, he sees this--between the policy for little kids, the
policies for higher education and, of course, what's happening
in the monasteries and on the grasslands--he sees this, in a
way, as a threat that could be the end of our history, and that
just really struck me, when you think of it all together.
Chair Merkley. It was in that perspective of seeing these
many, many different strategies from different angles in which
I was inquiring, kind of, about the plan to wipe out the
language and essentially the culture in a generation.
You spoke about a pop singer, age 26, I believe, who self-
immolated. Was he allowed to sing? Did he become a star within
Tibet or was he outside Tibet? Was he allowed to sing in
Tibetan inside Tibet and become popular culturally in that
language?
Ms. Tethong. Yes, he was. He, in particular, was famous in
Chinese circles because--he was known because he participated
in all these Chinese talent shows, like the music, sort of,
idol-type shows, and so he became really well known. But he
would do--you could see in his lyrics and in his story, he
really tried to promote Tibetan language and identity and to
have a message in there about the importance of the Tibetan
homeland, sort of without saying it, the Tibetan nation and our
cultural roots.
And I think the key is, if you look from the outside--and
this is what China will say--Tibetans have freedom of
expression. Look, they sing in Tibetan; you know, you can see
the kids dressed in their Tibetan clothing. In the end, they do
allow a certain amount of cultural freedom and expression, but
it is very, very, very constrained, very limited.
There was a platform recently--a Chinese social media
platform--that was streaming a conversation between two Tibetan
pop stars, very well known, and one was saying to the other, we
can't do this--we shouldn't speak in Tibetan on this platform,
or they will shut us down. So, you can see----
Chair Merkley. Yes.
Ms. Tethong. You know, I think, really, within a generation
we may see the end--if these genocidal policies are allowed to
go ahead--we may see the end of Tibetans who can even sing and
express themselves in sort of secondary discourse in that
language.
Chair Merkley. Well, it's a very powerful story when
someone who's so successful and so young takes their own life
in protest.
And can you give us his name once again?
Ms. Tethong. Yes. Tsewang Norbu was his name, 25 years old.
Chair Merkley. Twenty-five. Thank you.
I want to turn to Mr. Abduweli. You note in your testimony
that the written language was changed from a Uyghur alphabet to
a Cyrillic alphabet to a sinicized Latin script. How much does
changing the writing play into interrupting the generational
cultural traditions and language abilities?
Mr. Abduweli. My father, when he went to high school, was
educated using the Cyrillic alphabet, and then my mother,
younger than him, was educated using the Latin alphabet. At
home they have books in the Cyrillic alphabet, and they have
books in the Latin alphabet, but no one can read what they say
because it's a different alphabet. Then when we children
started primary school, the first year we studied the Latin
alphabet and the next year we studied the Arabic alphabet. And
my brothers cannot read my books and I cannot read their books.
Because the Latin alphabet was implemented in the Uyghur
homeland more than 20 years ago, a generation became
illiterate, because the Latin alphabet was replaced by the
Arabic alphabet and people became illiterate suddenly.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Mr. Abduweli. We had illiteracy three times--use Cyrillic,
they don't take it; know Latin and then they don't know the
second or the third one. So they have a third generation
dealing with this alphabetic change, and thus people become
illiterate.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Congresswoman Steel, I see you've rejoined us. Do you want
to ask any additional questions?
Representative Steel. I just want to say thank you, and
that this is so necessary for everybody to hear what the CCP
has been doing.
So, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all the
witnesses. And you know what? I'm going to speak against the
CCP, and I've been doing this since I got elected in 2020.
Let's work together and let's make sure the whole world knows
what the CCP's been doing.
Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Steel. It's
a really valuable contribution, and it's so important to have
these hearings so that more of us become educated and
articulate about these forms of oppression.
I wanted to ask one last question, Mr. Abduweli, and this
ties into a previous hearing we had. When you advocated for
Uyghur kindergartens and worked to establish them--basically
under that vision from Article 4 of the constitution--your
family members were oppressed, and I believe your brother and
sister have been imprisoned. We understand your niece, I'm very
sorry to hear, passed away in detention two years ago after
returning to Shandong from Japan. Did they face imprisonment
for their own activities, or was it retaliation, in part, to
send a message to advocates abroad?
Mr. Abduweli. I started my mother language campaign on
September 15, 2011--my first mother language kindergarten and
then my mother language schools. Because of that I got arrested
on August 19, 2013, and in Turkey in 2017 because of the Uyghur
students that were arrested in Egypt on July 4, 2017. I
received their voice message and written message, and I spoke
up. Because of this my older brother got arrested, and I
learned that he was sentenced to 14 years. Because of my
activism, my younger sister was forced to denounce me for more
than a year, from 2016 to September 2017. For an entire year
she criticized me and denounced me and claimed that I'm a
separatist or something like that, and then in the end she also
ended up in a concentration camp and sentenced to 12 years.
And then in November 2019, I participated in leaking the
Xinjiang file and the Karakax List. And because of that my
wife's family members--because at that time we had some
contact--got arrested. And so I think those are related. When I
take some action, when I speak up, the next step is
retaliation. So I think it's related to the retaliation--to get
me to stop. My niece, when she was in Japan, told me really
clearly that I became a hero, but her father and her aunt
became victims because of me. I feel really sorry about what
happened to her.
She went back to Japan because she was under the control of
the Chinese police through the Chinese social media app WeChat.
The Chinese police were always trying to force her to stop me,
but she couldn't stop me. Because of this, she went back to
China, and she died in detention at the place where I was first
arrested and sexually abused. I feel very sorry about it. I
hope this retaliation will stop and I hope these atrocities
will stop.
Chair Merkley. It's absolutely horrific and I'm sure very
effective in suppressing conversation about China's many
assaults on human rights.
This retaliation against family for freedom of speech
abroad is just--I think about this, and I think, why do we
allow any import, any recognition, any validation of the
Chinese government given the many, many crimes against humanity
that we've witnessed through this series of hearings?
Thank you for sharing that story, and we all have great
empathy with the horrific situation it puts you in and everyone
who wants to speak up from their heart about human rights
abuses inside China.
I really appreciate all of you on the panel for sharing
your knowledge and experience. We have to keep speaking out. We
cannot let Chinese pressure in any form--against our companies,
against advocates within our country, against Chinese citizens
abroad--stop us from scrutinizing and publicizing these
activities. Without scrutiny, without publicization, there is
no chance to diminish this strategy of wiping out the languages
and the cultures of the many groups within China.
And with that--I know I have an official script here
somewhere for closing--specifically, the record will remain
open until the close of business on Friday, April 8th. And for
any members who would like to put additional things into the
record, you are welcome to do so, and I extend that invitation
to our panel of experts as well.
Thank you. And with that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
------
Prepared Statement of Gerald Roche
Thank you sincerely for this opportunity to testify today. I deeply
appreciate the chance to share with all of you some insights into the
language rights situation for people in China, and I thank the
Commission for bringing attention to this important topic.
We must defend language rights because doing so ensures dignity,
freedom, and equality for all people. Who among us would want to live
without any of these?
When people are denied language rights, it severs their connections
to their family, community, and heritage. It excludes them from
political participation. When people are denied language rights in
vital services like healthcare, their lives are at risk. And when they
are denied language rights in education, their futures are at risk.
Millions of people in China today face these challenges due to the
state's denial of language rights. This happens primarily in two ways:
erasure and suppression.
Erasure refers to the state's refusal to acknowledge the existence
of most of China's languages, by calling them dialects. To put this in
perspective, imagine if German, English, and Norwegian were defined as
``dialects'' of a single language.\1\ Imagine if your government told
you what language you speak. How would you feel?
In China, erasure means that from the country's 300 or so
languages, only about 56 are recognized as languages: one for each of
the country's ``nationalities.'' \2\ Most people in China speak
unrecognized languages, whether they belong to the Han majority or a
minority group.\3\ Most people in China are therefore completely denied
their language rights.
Our research demonstrates the catastrophic impacts of this denial
in Tibet.\4\ Tibetan people in China use about 30 unrecognized
languages,\5\ not including Tibetan.\6\ People who use these
unrecognized languages face linguistic barriers everywhere: in schools,
media, government, healthcare, the legal system and so on. When the
government refuses to remove these barriers, people are forced to adapt
by changing their language to either Tibetan or Chinese.\7\
Meanwhile, recognized languages like Uyghur, Mongolian, and
Tibetan, are suppressed.
Suppression happens through the gradual dilution of the Chinese
constitution's language freedoms,\8\ and the pervasive under-
implementation of protections for minority languages.\9\ Suppression
also takes place through the encroachment of the national language,
Mandarin, into spaces for minority languages--part of a broader plan to
universalize Mandarin among the entire population.\10\
The cumulative impact of erasure and suppression means that at
least half of China's languages are currently losing speakers or
signers as they switch to dominant languages.\11\ In an open,
democratic society, people would be lobbying and protesting to change
this unjust system. But in China, particularly under Xi Jinping, civil
society has become increasingly repressed domestically, and isolated
internationally.\12\ In Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia,
wherever protest happens, the state sees foreign interference rather
than legitimate grievances.
China's citizens will therefore be denied an unprecedented historic
opportunity to defend language rights, namely, the United Nations
International Decade for Indigenous Languages, which starts this
year.\13\ China will prevent its citizens from participating in this
event because it denies that it has Indigenous people,\14\ and it
denies its colonial history.\15\
The goal of this Decade is ``leaving no one behind and no one
outside.'' We have a responsibility to extend this inclusion to people
in China, to ensure they are not left behind or outside.
Here are some suggestions for how we can do this:
1. The U.S. must pressure China to clarify whether its citizens can
identify as Indigenous and whether they can participate in the UN
Decade. An ideal opportunity to do this is China's upcoming Universal
Periodic Review in the UN Human Rights Council in November 2023.\16\
2. China's efforts to isolate its citizens from international civil
society need to be countered. We must raise awareness inside China of
language rights, and of activities taking place globally during the UN
Decade.\17\
3. With specific regard to Tibet, earmarking funding for Tibet's
unrecognized languages will make a huge difference. This can be done
using funds allocated under the Tibetan Policy Act of 2020.\18\
4. Finally, the U.S. needs to lead by example. The UN Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should be formally endorsed, and
its obligations respected.\19\ Failing to do so will enable China to
deflect attention from their language rights violations and onto
America's.
Thank you again for your time, and if anything I have said raises
questions for you, I would be very happy to discuss further.
[Endnotes appear after Appendix One.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
Prepared Statement of Enghebatu Togochog
introduction
My name is Enghebatu Togochog. I am a Mongolian from Southern
Mongolia, widely known as ``Inner Mongolia.'' Southern Mongolia is home
to six million Mongolians, a population that is twice as large as that
of the independent country of Mongolia. In 1949, Southern Mongolia was
officially annexed to the People's Republic of China, becoming the
first so-called ``Nationality Minority Autonomous Region.''
Over the past 73 years, praised as the ``model autonomy,'' Southern
Mongolia has served as the de facto testing ground of China's ethnic
policies. These include genocide, ethnic cleansing, political purge,
economic exploitation, cultural eradication, linguistic assimilation,
social marginalization, resource extraction, and environmental
destruction, as detailed below.
As early as the late 1940s, before the establishment of the
People's Republic of China, Southern Mongolia was occupied by the
Chinese Communist forces and was subjected to the so-called ``Land
Reform Movement.'' Mongolian land was effectively confiscated and
distributed to the Chinese, and tens of thousands of Southern
Mongolians were executed as ``herd-lords.''
During the 1950s, at least 20,000 Southern Mongolian elite
intellectuals were persecuted as ``national rightists'' for demanding
the materialization of ``nationality autonomy'' that the Chinese
Communist government promised to Southern Mongolia.
From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Southern Mongolia had
experienced a large-scale genocide campaign carefully designed by the
Chinese Central Government and carried out by the People's Liberation
Army and Chinese settlers. At least 100,000 Southern Mongolians were
tortured to death, and a half million were persecuted. One-third of the
Southern Mongolian population was affected by this genocide of
unprecedented scale.
In the early 1980s, the Chinese Central Government accelerated the
process of Chinese migration to Southern Mongolia. As a result, in
1981, a large-scale student movement broke out across Southern
Mongolia. After a three-month-long, region-wide student protest, the
Chinese Government cracked down on the students and arrested, detained,
and imprisoned the student leaders and supporters.
In the early 1990s, Southern Mongolian intellectuals established a
number of underground organizations protesting Chinese occupation and
demanding national freedom. All of them were harshly crushed by the
Chinese authorities. In 1995, one such organization--the Southern
Mongolian Democratic Alliance (SMDA), which aimed to achieve the total
independence of Southern Mongolia and ultimately to merge with the
independent country of Mongolia--was declared a ``national separatist
organization.'' The president and the vice president of the
organization, Mr. Hada and Mr. Tegexi, were arrested and sentenced to
15 years and 10 years in jail, respectively, on charges of ``separatism
and espionage.'' Nearly 70 other members were arrested, detained, and
sent to jail for periods ranging from 3 months to a year. Mr. Hada is
still under house arrest today after serving 15 years of imprisonment
and an additional 4-year extrajudicial detention.
In 2001, China started a fresh crusade against the traditional
Mongolian nomadic way of life. Two sets of policies, namely the
``Ecological Migration'' and the ``Livestock Grazing Ban,'' were
introduced to forcibly displace the entire Mongolian herder population
from their ancestral lands to overwhelmingly Chinese-populated urban
and agricultural areas. These displaced herders became homeless,
jobless and landless. The Mongolian pastoralist way of life and nomadic
civilization were effectively wiped out. Southern Mongolians consider
this a critical step in China's overall cultural genocide in Southern
Mongolia.
According to the Chinese Central Government State Council
announcement published on its website in May 2012, by the end of 2015,
China would resettle the remaining nomad population of 246,000
households, or 1.157 million nomads, within the borders of China. This
means by the end of 2015, the millennium-old nomadic civilization was
officially put to an end in China.
In 2009, the Chinese Central Government announced that Southern
Mongolia would become ``China's largest energy base.'' Chinese
extractive industries, including major state-run mining corporations
and thousands of ninja miners, rushed into Southern Mongolia.
In May 2011, a regionwide protest broke out in Southern Mongolia,
sparked by the brutal killing of a Mongolian herder who defended his
land from coal miners. Tens of thousands of students took to the street
supporting the widespread herders' protest across the region. The
Chinese authorities responded with riot police and paramilitary forces
to put down the uprising. Hundreds were arrested, detained, and jailed.
Resource extraction and environmental destruction were not halted, but
only exacerbated.
ongoing cultural genocide
As the last phase of the cultural genocide campaign, in June 2020,
the Chinese Central Government announced that it would implement
``Second Generation Bilingual Education,'' a new euphemism for the
renewed attack on Mongolian culture. The goal of the new policy is
clear: wipe out Mongolian language, culture, and identity and turn
Southern Mongolia into a homogenous, worry-free Chinese society.
In response to this, starting in late August 2020, the Southern
Mongolians carried out a regionwide nonviolent resistance movement. The
entire Southern Mongolian populace stood up to the Chinese regime. From
kindergarteners to college professors, from ordinary herders to
prominent scholars, from party members to government employees, from
artists to athletes, from lawyers to police officers, from taxi drivers
to delivery men, all walks of life of Southern Mongolian society took
part in the protest in one way or another. At least 300,000 Mongolian
students went on a total school strike. The Chinese authorities harshly
cracked down on the movement. An estimated 8,000-10,000 Southern
Mongolians have been arrested, detained, jailed, and placed under house
arrest. Eleven Southern Mongolians lost their lives in defense of the
right to use their mother tongue.
What followed this heavyhanded crackdown was a full-scale and full-
speed cultural genocide campaign, the scope of which has extended far
beyond the simple switch of medium of instruction from Mongolian to
Chinese in schools.
On January 1, 2021, all government mouthpieces, including the Inner
Mongolia Radio and Television Mongolian language services, were ordered
to start replacing Mongolian cultural programs with Chinese ones in
order to promote ``the strong sense of Chinese Zhongguo nationality
common identity.''
``Learn Chinese and become a civilized person'' has been an
official slogan publicly promoting Chinese supremacy over Mongolian
language, culture, and identity. Slogans of ``mutual interaction,
mutual exchange and mutual assimilation of all ethnic groups to firmly
establish the Chinese nationality common identity'' have been aired
repeatedly from television and radio stations across the region.
In schools, Mongolian students are subjected to military-style
training and propaganda activities. Mongolian college students are
forced to wear Mao suits and sing Communist ``red'' songs to extol the
greatness of China. Mongolian teachers and professors are brought to
the Chinese Communist red base Yan'an to receive patriotic education.
In a move to justify the total elimination of Mongolian languages
from the entire educational system in Southern Mongolia, the Chinese
National Congress announced recently that ``education in minority
languages as local legislations stipulated is unconstitutional,''
according to the Chinese official press People's Daily. This overwrites
Article 4 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which
states, ``All ethnicities have the freedoms and rights to use and
develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or
reform their own folkways and customs.''
Local authorities in the Autonomous Region reacted promptly to
implement this directive. Classes on Mongolian culture and history
taught in Mongolian in local schools are considered to be
``underemphasizing the Chinese nationality common identity and
deliberately overemphasizing [an] individual ethnic group's `ethnic
identity' and `ethnic sentiment,' '' and hence are removed from the
curriculum across the region.
In an effort to completely block all avenues of learning Mongolian,
on January 9, 2021, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Department of
Education issued a document banning ``any school from gathering
students to offer extracurricular learning courses or teaching new
courses.'' It strictly prohibited middle and elementary school teachers
from organizing or participating in any training organizations outside
the campus or any paid make-up courses organized by teachers, parents
and parents' committees, or inducing students to participate in any
paid make-up courses organized by themselves or others; introducing
student sources and providing relevant information to any training
organization outside the school campus is strictly prohibited,
according to Xin Lang Wang, one of the Chinese official presses.
Flagrant cultural annihilation is most visible in the series of
arts and cultural performances put together by the Chinese authorities
for the Mongolian Tsagaan Sar, the traditional Mongolian new year.
Peking operas have replaced the traditional Mongolian art performance
in TV programs. In some programs, traditional Mongolian dances have
been converted to hybrid ones that exhibit full features of Chinese
operas. The horse-head fiddle, a traditional Mongolian musical
instrument, has been played in concert with the suona, a distinctively
high-pitched instrument often played in Chinese traditional music
ensembles.
The most sacred Mongolian sites, like Oboo, a stone altar devoted
to the worship of Eternal Sky and local gods, have also been targeted
by this campaign. Chinese traditional performers like Yangge dancers
have frequently shown up on Oboo sites to mock the Mongolian Oboo
ritual ceremony.
Sculptures of Mongolian historical figures have been taken down and
smashed; signs in Mongolian have been removed from schools, buildings,
streets, and parks. The latest footage we received shows a group of
construction workers removing the Mongolian letters from the official
sign of the Hohhot City People's Procuratorates in the regional
capital. In another photo, a group of Mongolian students stand next to
a sign in Mongolian at their school entrance; the sign was scheduled to
be removed the next day.
Mongolian publications are banned altogether, and Mongolian books
are taken down from bookstore shelves. Printing and copy services on
the street are ordered not to provide services of printing and copying
any materials in Mongolian. Postal and courier services are instructed
not to deliver any Mongolian books and publications.
On the official front, a regionwide intensive training program was
launched. According to the Inner Mongolia News official website, the
first session of the Region-wide Educational System Special Training
for the Firm Inculcation of the Chinese Nationality Common Identity
started on December 8, 2020. Although the exact details of the training
and the total number of trainees remain unknown, the report confirmed
that a three-phase training program will be completed by the end of
March 2021. Other regional and local news revealed that the
synchronized training sessions were held in all schools, colleges, and
universities throughout the Autonomous Region.
A 47-page internal document entitled ``Propaganda Pamphlet for
Inculcating the Chinese Nationality Common Identity to Push for the
Usage of Nationally Compiled Textbook and National Common Language
Education'' was issued by the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Department of Education in January 2021. According to a trainee who
asked not to be identified, all the lectures, discussions, reflections,
and quizzes are centered on this document.
Quoting Xi Jinping's remarks, the document ``urges the masses to
communicate and train together to take up the work of interfusing the
feelings, to strive hard to create a social condition of living
together, learning together, working together and enjoying together,
and urges all ethnic groups to accept the great mother country, Chinese
nationality, Chinese culture, Chinese Communist Party and socialism
with Chinese characteristics.'' The document also warns the Southern
Mongolians that ``the wrong path of narrow nationalism can easily lead
to the return of separatist tendency.''
Another trainee who managed to leave China and who has arrived in
the United States recently told us that he and all of his Mongolian
coworkers were forced to receive this training for two months. During
the training, they had to denounce their ``narrow nationalism'' and
``nationalistic feeling'' and embrace the ``Chinese nationality common
identity.'' They were required to provide all of their social contacts
and the details of their social media activities to the authorities.
Toward the end of the training, they were forced to confess their
supposed ``mistakes,'' including their past gatherings where they wore
Mongolian traditional clothes and sang Mongolian songs. They were
warned that these mistakes went against the spirit of ``Chinese
nationality common identity.'' They had to answer multiple
questionnaires designed to assess their ``ideological improvement.''
One of the questions, the trainee said, was, ``How many Chinese friends
do you have?'' Those who answered ``none'' or ``few'' participated in
extended trainings before they were qualified to ``graduate.'' Before
the release, all trainees signed a paper promising that they would not
engage in any activities highlighting ``Mongolian characteristics'' or
expressing ``nationalistic feeling.''
From what is happening to the Uyghurs and what is happening to the
Mongolians and Tibetans, it is apparent that the Chinese authorities
are engaging in different forms of genocide campaigns on multiple
fronts. While in East Turkistan, millions of Uyghurs and other Muslim
peoples are locked up in concentration camps, in Southern Mongolia, a
full-scale cultural genocide campaign is taking place. In Tibet, a
similar campaign has been launched to eradicate the unique Tibetan
culture and religious beliefs. Whatever form the campaign takes, the
ultimate goal of the Chinese authorities is the same: wipe out the
language, culture, and identity of these three peoples and force them
to adopt the so-called zhong hua, or, simply put, ``Chinese''
nationality. This goal is publicly stated and advertised by the Chinese
Government across China.
recommendations
Considering the deteriorating human rights conditions in Southern
Mongolia; China's determination to erase the Mongolian language,
culture, and identity; and the lack of support from the international
community, I would like to make the following recommendations to the
United States Congress:
1. Conduct further hearings and testimonies to investigate the
gross human rights violations in Southern Mongolia, particularly the
ongoing cultural genocide;
2. Establish a Mongolian language broadcast in Voice of America
and/or Radio Free Asia to help Southern Mongolians keep their language
alive and establish a channel to the free and democratic world;
3. Introduce and pass legislation similar to the Uyghur Human
Rights Policy Act and Tibetan Policy and Support Act to support the six
million Southern Mongolians in their efforts to defend their basic
human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Thank you.
______
Prepared Statement of Lhadon Tethong
Thank you Chairman McGovern, Chairman Merkley, members of the
Commission and CECC staff for all of your work and commitment to
support human rights and freedom in Tibet. And thank you for giving me
the opportunity to speak here today.
As a Tibetan, and someone who has been working full time on the
Sino-Tibetan conflict for the past twenty-three years, I can safely
say: it takes a lot to shock me. But last year, when my colleagues and
I began research into reports that Tibetan children were being sent to
state-run boarding schools at an alarmingly high rate, and against
their parents wishes, we were stunned and alarmed by what we found.
Over the past decade--under the cover of darkness of China's near
total information blackout and lockdown of Tibet--the Chinese
authorities have been constructing a massive colonial boarding school
system. These schools threaten the very survival of the Tibetan people
and nation because they so wholly and completely target the future of
Tibet--our children. And not just some of them, but all of them, even
the youngest ones.
China's colonial boarding school system in Tibet is the cornerstone
of a broader effort to wipe out the current and future resistance of
the fiercely proud Tibetan people, by eliminating the three pillars of
Tibetan identity--language, religion, and way of life.
In essence, the schools streamline and fasttrack this policy by
ripping Tibetan children from their roots, by stealing the language
from their tongues, and by turning them into something that they are
not.
And together with ``common language'' and ``bilingual education''
policies, and other policies purposely named to sound benign when, in
fact, they are not, they represent an entirely new level of attack on
the Tibetan people that threatens to irreversibly alter Tibetan life in
every space in Tibet--on the grasslands, in the monasteries, in the
universities, in villages, in cities, and even in the privacy of one's
own home.
As one Tibetan education policy expert from Tibet who was raised
during the cultural revolution told me recently: ``What is happening
now is actually worse than the Cultural Revolution. At that time, they
destroyed so much physically, but now they are trying to destroy the
entire foundation of who we are as a people on the inside.''
In our report, released in December, we found that:
At least 800,000 to 900,000 Tibetan children in all of
historical Tibet--representing nearly eighty percent of all Tibetan
school children ages 6 to 18--are now separated from their families and
living in colonial boarding schools.
This number does not include four- and five-year-olds
being made to live in boarding preschools because China is actively
trying to hide their existence. We believe this number is also very
high.
These children are forbidden from practicing religion and
cut off from authentic Tibetan culture--beyond, of course, what the
Chinese Communist Party approves of.
They are being taught almost entirely in Chinese, by
mostly Chinese teachers, from Chinese textbooks that reflect Chinese
life and history, culture and values, while completely denying Tibet's
own rich and ancient history and culture.
On top of this, they are subjected to intense political
indoctrination which says they must be loyal to the Chinese Communist
Party and the Chinese nation first and above all else.
Most Tibetan parents have no choice but to send their
children away to live in these state-run schools because the
authorities have closed the local village schools, along with most
privately run Tibetan schools and monastery schools.
Parents who try to resist or refuse are threatened with
fines and other serious consequences. And, of course, the children also
have no choice.
One person from Tibet described the situation like this: ``I know
of children aged four to five who don't want to be separated from their
mothers. They are forced to go to boarding schools. In some cases, the
children cry for days, sticking to their mother's laps, begging not to
be sent away and even refusing to go back. Both the children and the
parents are unwilling.''
This insidious policy--to isolate children from their families so
as to erase their Tibetan identity and replace it with a Chinese
identity--was developed at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist
Party. And it is blatantly racist.
Of course Tibetan parents want their children to receive the best
possible education, but they don't want to have to send them away to
get it. Nobody wants to send their children away. Chinese people don't
want to send their children away.
A backlash against school consolidation policies in China led the
State Council to rule, in 2012, that all levels of school should be, in
principle, non-residential, especially for young children in grades one
to three.
Three years later, after Xi Jinping came to power, the same State
Council issued a decree for so-called ``minority areas'' to
``strengthen boarding school construction'' and ``achieve the goal that
students of all ethnic minorities will study in a school, live in a
school and grow up in a school.''
Unlike in the past, where middle and high school students in Tibet
had to attend boarding schools where we have heard firsthand accounts
of horrific abuse and political indoctrination, now it's primary and
even preschool children who are also being targeted.
Any of you with kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews will know that
children at the age of four, five, and six, and even those seven,
eight, nine, and ten are not that far off from being babies. They are
sweet and vulnerable and they need their parents and their families
just to manage daily life.
My five-year-old son started kindergarten this year and I was
surprised to find both of us quite nervous and emotional over this rite
of passage. But I walk him to school each day. And I pick him up each
evening. Every day he gets to come home and be enveloped into the love,
safety, and comfort of our family where I can protect him and look out
for his best interests.
And I can teach and share with him--together with his father,
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins--Tibetan language, stories,
songs and dances, prayers and customs, and all of the other important
cultural and religious practices and traditions of our family, our
people, and our ancestors.
That this precious time of social and emotional growth--where the
basic building blocks of identity are transmitted and cemented--is
being denied to the vast majority of Tibetan children, and to their
parents and families, is truly devastating. And that it is being done
intentionally is enraging.
In the U.S., Canada, Australia and other countries, policies that
separated Native American, Indigenous, and Aboriginal children from
their families and made them live in residential boarding schools
designed to erase or change their identity is something we think of as
a terrible and shameful mistake of the past. We think of now as the
time for inquiries and apologies--like the historic apology just given
by the Pope to First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people for the Catholic
Church's role in Canada's residential school system.
It is the time for trying to repair some of the tremendous harm
that was done and that continues to reverberate. Not a time when any
government would be knowingly and deliberately replicating this heinous
model, and on such a massive scale. And the reason China is doing this?
The reason Xi Jinping is taking this genocidal approach in Tibet? To
eliminate dissent and difference once and for all, by transforming
Tibetans into Chinese.
But this is a genocidal project that is bound to fail because even
after 70 years of a vicious and violent occupation, Tibetans continue
to fight for their rights and freedom.
Because generation after generation of Tibetans--even those with no
memory of a Free Tibet--have shown their love and allegiance to Tibet--
to the mountains, the grasslands, to our mother tongue, the teachings
of the Buddha, and our great sages, spiritual teachers, and leaders,
most especially His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama--and not to China.
Just last month, 25-year-old Tsewang Norbu, a famous Tibetan pop
star who was just signed, in December, by Warner Brothers China,
reminded us all of this undeniable fact when he self-immolated in front
of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. He had every reason to live. He was
young, successful, college educated. He had a family and resources. His
whole life was ahead of him.
But he gave it all up, in the ultimate sacrifice at the most
meaningful and political location and moment, on the eve of the 63rd
anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa, when security in
Tibet is at its absolute tightest. He again demonstrated that no matter
China's economic, military, or political might, everything Chinese
leaders have done to try to convince, co-opt, coerce, and force
Tibetans to submit to Chinese rule has failed.
After looking at Tsewang Norbu's lyrics and life story, I think he
took this action because he wanted to remind us all that no matter what
personal success we may achieve as individuals, what matters the most
is your roots. Your homeland. Your culture. Your language. The freedom
to be who you are. To live as you see fit in your own land and on your
own terms.
But, of course, this is not possible in Tibet today under Chinese
rule. Tibetans are being blocked from even speaking Tibetan on Chinese
social media apps like Kuaishou and Douyin, the Chinese version of
TikTok. And even young children trying to defend their right to study
and speak in Tibetan are being severely punished.
Recently, we learned that three students, 16-year-old Palsang, 15-
year-old Sermo, and 11-year-old Yangkyi, were sent from a colonial
boarding school in Markham County to a detention center for expressing
their sadness over the removal of Tibetan language classes from the
school. They are reported to have been arrested and taken away
forcefully under the pretext of needing psychological counseling. It
has been five months since they were taken away, and still we know
little to nothing about their condition.
I think it is hard for people to fully understand what is at stake
here for Tibetans. What this all means for our nation. Our history. Our
survival. Language rights. Assimilationist policies. These are words
that not everyone can relate to. They can feel quite cold or technical,
perhaps even alienating to the average person who lives in a free and
open society.
What I would like to do today is to explain the battle for Tibet's
existence in a way that perhaps everyone can relate to better, and
while this example and its parallels are not perfect, I believe it
helps to illuminate what is at stake.
Imagine that Russia not only invades, but occupies Ukraine, as
China has done to Tibet for the past 70 years. Imagine the beautiful
Ukrainian children we see on TV, trying to flee the war with their
mothers or hiding from Russia's bombs in basements, are trapped by
Russian forces. Their parents and grandparents are killed, imprisoned,
or ultimately, and only by sheer force, made to submit to their foreign
rulers. After some time, these children are taken away from their
parents. Not just a few of them. Eighty percent of them. Nearly all of
them.
And they are made to live in boarding schools designed by Russians,
taught mainly by Russians in Russian language, and with a curriculum
that celebrates Russian culture and history and Moscow's military
conquests in Crimea, in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria.
They are taught that Russia's invasion was for their benefit--that
Ukrainians were liberated from Nazi rule. Every day these children have
to raise the Russian flag. Every day they have to sing the Russian
national anthem. After some time, most do not even realize that Ukraine
was ever an independent nation. They do not know Zelensky's name. Or,
if they do, they are taught he is an evil terrorist.
I know any good and moral person can see how wrong this would be.
On every level. It's pretty much crystal clear at this moment while we
all bear witness to the horror and injustice of Russia's war of
aggression in Ukraine.
We would never accept it. We would fight against it and use every
tool in our toolbox to make Russia stop. To save Ukrainian children. To
reunite them with their parents. We would know we must refuse to let
Russia erase Ukraine from our world and from history. That would be the
course of action we would take. That would be the right thing to do.
That should be the course of action we take with China. There is so
much we can do. The world's opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine
has shown us how much power people and governments, both individually
and collectively, have. Just as Putin's actions have shown us that a
totalitarian state with imperial ambitions cannot be allowed to invade,
occupy, and endlessly terrorize its neighbors--because a state that so
blatantly flouts international rules and norms, and indeed actively
seeks to undermine them, no matter what its propaganda says are its
intentions, threatens us all.
Chinese imperialism must be stopped. Xi Jinping must be stopped.
The fate of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southern Mongolians, Hongkongers,
Taiwanese, affects us all. I will end my remarks here and save my
specific recommendations for the Q&A. I would also like to submit our
report on China's colonial boarding school system in Tibet for the
record. Thank you.
______
Prepared Statement of Ayup Abduweli
When a Language Stands Up against Atrocities
Uyghur was recognized as an official language, together with
Mandarin, after the arrival of Communist rule in October 1949. This did
not change when the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was set up in
1955--Uyghur was preserved as the main language of instruction in the
region, as it was before 1949. However, Uyghur orthography was treated
as the remains of pre-Communist backwardness. This meant that the
Uyghur Arabic script, which had been used for almost one thousand
years, stopped being used, and was replaced with a new spelling system.
This caused hundreds of thousands of people to become illiterate, and
it also made a thousand years of written legacy unreadable.
Furthermore, beginning in 1956, the CCP treated the Arabic Uyghur
script as representative of Islam, and a competitor and cultural threat
to Mandarin. Officials set out to ``revolutionize'' the Uyghur writing
system, and the Xinjiang language committee was ordered to change the
Uyghur Arabic script into a Cyrillic one.
Uyghur linguists who didn't agree with the language policy were
imprisoned, such as Ibrahim Muti, Abdurehim Otkur, Mirsultan Osmanov,
and Reveydulla Hemdulla. Ibrahim Muti and Abdurehim Otkur, Uyghur
scholars educated during the Kuomintang period, were imprisoned for 20
years. Uyghur teachers, publishers, editors, and professors were also
arrested for the same reasons.
The alphabetic change in 1956 resulted in thousands of Uyghurs
being imprisoned and thousands of books becoming unreadable, and
millions of people becoming illiterate. Uyghurs were forced to learn a
brand-new writing system.
Then, in 1962, the Uyghur alphabet was changed to a sinicized Latin
script, aimed at unifying all ethnic languages under a Han Chinese
phonetic alphabet. This created illiteracy, miscommunication, and
discouragement among the Uyghurs. It also led to book burning and mass
arrests of Uyghur intellectuals.
From 1966 to 1976, the Uyghur language experienced a Cultural
Revolution which was imposed by the CCP. Most of the Uyghur elite
escaped to the Soviet Union within ten years. There were more than
100,000 Uyghurs and Kazakhs who escaped to Turkic-speaking Soviet
republics because they were afraid of imprisonment and other types of
physical and mental torture.
During the Cultural Revolution, every aspect of Uyghur life was
``revolutionized''. Uyghur was ``enriched'' with ``red'' Mandarin
revolutionary words. Millions of copies of books were burned. The
Cultural Revolution treated the Uyghur script as the remains of the
``feudalistic backward old society.''
At that time, books in the Uyghur Arabic script were treated as
anti-revolutionary yellow books. The books were all collected from
every Uyghur family and then burned in front of mosques. My father kept
some yellow books in secret boxes, and when I was young he read some
books to us from those boxes.
The Uyghur language was treated as an object of the revolution, and
it was revolutionized by the Chinese phonetic alphabet. Based on my
study of Chinese loan words in the Uyghur-language Xinjiang Daily of
October 1st, 1970, the level of loan words reached 62 percent. This
made Uyghurs feel marginalized, threatened, and endangered.
The Uyghur language enjoyed a short period of a golden age from
1982 to the early 2000s. However, the Uyghur language was treated as an
obstacle to the modernization of Uyghurs. During this time, Chinese
symbolized modernity and Uyghur symbolized being outdated, feudal, and
backward. In order to reach the goal of modernization, the Uyghur
language was forced to change its orthography in order to absorb
Chinese loan words.
After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, the international
war against terrorism not only changed the fate of the world, but also
the fate of the Uyghurs' language. China has employed the international
outcry against terrorism to curb Uyghur cultural practices, especially
the Uyghur language, and has erased it as a language of instruction in
universities, colleges, and technology schools. The Uyghur language has
also been restricted in health care and other bureaucracies. This
creates disagreement among the Uyghur community.
In 2005, Memtimin Elyar, a website administrator and IT engineer,
started an online campaign to protect and recover the legal rights of
the Uyghur language as stipulated by the Chinese constitution and the
Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law. However, Elyar was arrested and sentenced
to 12 years in prison. More than ten intellectuals were arrested at
that time. In 2016, the intellectuals who signed the petition were also
targeted by the government. All of the scholars who signed the petition
have been arrested--Perhat Tursun, Kuresh Tahir, Kamil Rehim, and
Qurban Mamut are among them.
In September 2011, another campaign was started to protect the
legal rights of Uyghurs and preserve the Uyghur language as a language
of instruction in education. I established the first mother-tongue
kindergarten in Kashgar on September 15, 2011. My mother-tongue
movement became so popular online that 500,000 followers followed it.
In September 2012, together with my friends Dilyar Obulqasim and
Memetsidiq Abdureshit, I decided to establish a new mother-tongue
kindergarten in Urumqi. Unfortunately, the application for this
kindergarten was rejected by the authorities.
On March 19, 2013, we decided to start a joint campaign with
Mongol, Kazakh and Kyrgyz intellectuals, because those languages were
also in danger. We decided to hold a conference about how to protect
ethnic minority languages in Xinjiang within the framework of the
Chinese constitution, and how to strengthen the mother-tongue
protection movement, and to base it on a legal foundation. We declared
our slogan to be ``If the Chinese constitution protects our language,
then it is our turn to protect it.'' For the conference, we invited
Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Mongol scholars who worked for the Chinese
government to discuss how to protect ethnic minority languages in
Xinjiang under the Chinese constitution. After the conference, our
slogan was popular in every city of Xinjiang, possibly because people
thought it was a safe slogan to use. I think it was our last
opportunity to try using this kind of action.
On August 19, 2013, Chinese security personnel arrested four of
us--Memetsidiq Abdureshit, Dilyar Obulqasim, Abdusalam Abdurahman and
me. Dilyar Obulqasim, Memetsidiq Abdureshit and I were held in a
detention center for more than 15 months, 18 months, and 24 months,
respectively.
Since 2017, language policy towards Uyghur has changed
dramatically. Uyghur was banned from education at the end of 2016,
Uyghur textbooks were forbidden, and textbook editors were heavily
sentenced. All Uyghur books were banned, and Uyghur books in homes, at
libraries and at bookstores were collected and burned.
Uyghur publishers have also been sentenced--30 percent of Uyghur
publishers have been sentenced, private bookstores have been shut down,
and the owners of the bookstores have also been sentenced.
Uyghur is not allowed at schools, even in schoolyards. Uyghur
language teachers have also been sentenced, and textbook editors have
been sentenced, with three of them sentenced to life imprisonment.
According to the documentation of Uyghur Hjelp, more than 400 Uyghur
textbook editors have been sentenced. Three editors-in-chief of Uyghur
textbooks have been sentenced to life imprisonment, and one editor-in-
chief was sentenced to death.
There are now 900,000 Uyghur kids in Chinese boarding schools.
Uyghur children from the age of six are forced to live in boarding
schools. Boarding kindergartens are mandatory for Uyghurs throughout
the countryside. Millions of Uyghur kids have been separated from their
families and their homeland, and they are victims of indoctrination
under the name of education.
Han Chinese officials have been appointed to Uyghurs' homes to
force Uyghurs not to speak Uyghur at home. Unqualified Han Chinese
teachers have been recruited from Chinese provinces, just to force
Uyghur students not to speak Uyghur in the classroom. These extreme
measures put the Uyghur language at the edge of extinction.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I want to
acknowledge that this is our first hearing since the publication of the
Commission's annual report on human rights conditions and rule-of-law
developments in China. Every year, the rigorously researched and
sourced work of the Commission's nonpartisan research staff makes a
profound contribution to the understanding of these issues in Congress,
the executive branch, the academic and advocacy communities, and
elsewhere, and that is certainly true again this year. When the Chinese
government seeks to mislead the world about the treatment of Chinese
citizens and the government's critics, the fact-based reporting of the
CECC Annual Report shines a light and helps document the truth.
Increasingly, this work informs and catalyzes meaningful action.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is the latest example in a
string of significant laws that grew out of the CECC's reporting. As
Congress now works to advance China-focused legislation, it's crucial
that it include tangible steps advocated by this Commission on a
bipartisan and bicameral basis, such as expanded humanitarian pathways
for Hong Kong residents and Uyghurs fleeing Chinese government
persecution, as well as the creation of a China Censorship Monitor and
Action Group to protect U.S. businesses and individuals from censorship
and intimidation.
I'd like to thank the Commission's staff--incredible team--for its
tireless, professional, and expert work preparing such a high-quality
report. While it is truly a team effort with significant contributions
from everyone on the staff, I'd like to especially recognize Megan
Fluker, who played an integral role in eight of these annual reports
and managed production of the last several before leaving the
Commission last fall. Megan, I know you're on your next chapter, but we
really appreciate your many years of dedicated effort.
Some of the most heartbreaking reporting details the genocide being
perpetrated against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities
in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as well as elements of
eugenics in population control policies directed at ethnic minorities.
These are not the only ways in which the Chinese Communist Party seeks
to destroy religious and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have
engaged in a years-long campaign of ``sinicization,'' requiring greater
conformity with officially sanctioned interpretations of Chinese
culture.
One of the most pernicious aspects of this campaign targets ethnic
minorities' language and identity. Under a policy that promises
``bilingual education,'' authorities in fact largely replace
instruction in ethnic minority languages with instruction in Mandarin
Chinese. Meanwhile, only a fraction of the languages spoken or signed
in China today receive official recognition and support, threatening
the ability and rights of unrecognized language communities to use and
develop their languages.
These policies break promises made to ethnic minorities under
China's constitution, under the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law, and under
international standards such as the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In this hearing, we will hear from expert witnesses about the
sinicization campaign that runs afoul of these standards for protecting
linguistic rights. We'll hear about recent substantial reductions in
the use of Mongolian language instruction and the harsh crackdown on
Mongolian culture that followed protests over these policies. We'll
hear about insidious and widespread efforts to separate Tibetan
children from their parents, placing them in boarding schools to
disrupt the intergenerational transmission of mother languages. And
we'll hear about the detention and imprisonment that often befalls
those who stand up for language, who stand up for cultural rights,
including the personal experience of one of our witnesses after he
opened a Uyghur language kindergarten.
This coercive assimilation erodes language, culture, and identity
for ethnic minorities in China. I look forward to today's witnesses
helping the Commission better understand the costs to communities of
these policies as we work with Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, and
others to protect their cultures from destruction.
Prepared Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on language and
identity in the People's Republic of China.
First, I join the Chair in welcoming the release of the
Commission's Annual Report for 2021 last week. It comprehensively
documents the Chinese government's appalling human rights record. The
report takes countless hours to research, write, fact-check, and
publish.
I particularly want to praise the Commission's professional staff
of researchers for their expertise and skill in producing each annual
report. They do amazing work and are a valued resource for this
Commission and the entire Congress. These researchers do their work
objectively. They check out every single fact. The reporting is
impeccably accurate, which makes this report especially powerful. I
can't thank them enough. Those of both parties who care about human
rights ought to recognize their incredible work.
Let me quote from author James Baldwin in a 1979 essay. He writes,
``Language is a political instrument, means, and proof of power. People
evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their
circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they
cannot articulate. And, if they cannot articulate it, they are
submerged.''
Baldwin was writing in a different context, but his message is one
that anthropologists and political scientists confirm: that language is
the core of a people's identity.
The People's Republic of China is a multilingual society. There are
56 official languages, and hundreds more that are not formally
recognized by the state. On paper, language is protected under Chinese
law. The PRC constitution gives ethnic minorities ``the freedom to use
and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve or
reform their own ways and customs.''
In practice, however, we are witnessing the exact opposite.
Government policies appear to promote standard Mandarin at the expense
of other languages. This is happening as the Party under Xi Jinping
imposes a coercive conformity across all facets of society.
This trend provides the context and the central question for this
hearing: Is the Chinese government and Party deliberately eroding the
language rights of ethnic minorities in a quest for majoritarian
political control? And in so doing, isn't the government violating
rights guaranteed under the Chinese constitution and law?
This Commission has documented protests by Tibetans, Mongolians,
and others against restrictions on their own languages. These protests
are often suppressed. People are jailed for simply asking that their
guaranteed rights be respected.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the
threats to the Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur languages under PRC
policies, and what this means for the concept of ethnic autonomy. I
also look forward to hearing about the vulnerability of the hundreds of
unofficial languages that also deserve protection and preservation.
So again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing.
Submissions for the Record
------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
INTENTIONALLY BLANK
Witness Biographies
Gerald Roche, anthropologist, Senior Research Fellow, Department of
Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University
Gerald Roche is an anthropologist who is currently a Senior
Research Fellow in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at
La Trobe University, a La Trobe Asia Fellow, and a co-chair of the
Global Coalition for Language Rights. His research contributions have
been recognized in several awards, including a La Trobe University Mid-
Career Research Award and an Australian Research Council Discovery
Early Career Research Award. His work focuses on issues of power, the
state, colonialism, and race in Asia, particularly in the transnational
Himalayan region. Much of his research explores how these issues
manifest in the language politics of this linguistically diverse area,
through state-sponsored language oppression and the social movements
and community practices which seek to resist it. He has also researched
and written on issues of racism, ethnicity, urbanization, popular
music, and community ritual in the region, and how these are shaped by
both state power and transnational flows.
Enghebatu Togochog, Director, Southern Mongolian Human Rights
Information Center
Enghebatu Togochog is the Director of the Southern Mongolian Human
Rights Information Center. In 2001, he established the Southern
Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), a New York-based
human rights organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the
rights of the Mongolian people in Inner Mongolia. Currently he is the
Director of the SMHRIC and the chief editor of the organizational
newsletter ``Southern Mongolia Watch.'' He has testified before the
United Nations Human Rights Council, United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues, United Nations Forum on Minority Issues, United
Nations Committee against Torture, and European Parliament. In 2002, he
testified before the CECC. His work includes the translation of ``Way
Out of Southern Mongolia'' and ``Genocide on the Mongolian Steppe.''
Lhadon Tethong, co-founder and Director, Tibet Action Institute
Lhadon Tethong is the co-founder and Director of the Tibet Action
Institute where she leads a team of technologists and rights advocates
in developing open-source technologies, strategies, and training
programs for Tibetans and others living under extreme repression.
Formerly the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet
International (2002-2009), Lhadon led the high-profile global campaign
to condemn China's rule of Tibet in the lead-up to and during the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games. As China prepared for the Games in 2007, she
made international headlines as she posted real-time accounts of her
travels through Beijing on her blog--one of the first in the Tibetan
world--BeijingWideOpen.org.
Ayup Abduweli, Uyghur writer and linguist
Ayup Abduweli is a writer and linguist specializing in Uyghur
language education. Born in 1973 near Kashgar in the Uyghur region, he
completed his bachelor's studies in Turkic literature at Minzu
University in 1997 and earned a master's degree at Xinjiang University
in 2001. He was a professor at Northwest Minzu University and Xinjiang
Financial and Economic University for nine years. He obtained a
master's degree in linguistics in 2011 from the University of Kansas in
Lawrence. He was a proponent of linguistic rights and an active
promoter of Uyghur language education, returning to Xinjiang in 2011
after graduation. Abduweli opened language schools and kindergartens in
the cities of Urumchi and Kashgar. During this time, he was subjected
to repeated interrogations and harassment by Chinese authorities. He
was arrested in August 2013 and accused of promoting separatist
activities. After 15 months in detention, he fled to Turkey from China
with his family in August 2015. In Turkey, he collected camp detainees'
stories and documented the plight of the Uyghur diaspora, especially of
Uyghurs in Turkey. Since 2019, Abduweli has lived in Bergen, Norway, as
a writer-in-residence through the ICORN program. In September 2016,
Abduweli founded the organization Uyghur Hjelp, advocating and
documenting the Uyghur plight with his team and providing aid to
Uyghurs in Turkey.
[all]