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Hundreds sign petition for Tibet language: activists/ENG

2010. október 27./AFP/TibetPress


BEIJING — Hundreds of teachers and students in northwest China have signed a petition in support of the Tibetan language, a rights group said, after an official education reform plan triggered protests.

Thousands of students demonstrated last week in Qinghai province over plans to institute Chinese as the main language of instruction, limiting use of Tibetan to language classes. Protests spread to a Beijing university on Friday.

According to sources in the area contacted by the US-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), more than 20 students from a Tibetan school in Qinghai's Gonghe county have been detained following the protests.

The petition, submitted to authorities, was signed by more than 300 teachers and students and calls for Tibetan to remain the main language for teaching.

It says that if Chinese-language instruction is adopted for Qinghai's Tibetan students, "the outcome would be that the students would not understand what the teacher is saying, not to mention be able to actually learn anything."

The petition -- a copy of which was emailed to AFP by ICT -- says that many Tibetans in the province come from farming and nomadic areas and have never been in a Chinese-language environment.

While it acknowledges the need for Tibetans to learn Chinese, it compares the reform plans to instituting English as the language of instruction for ordinary Han Chinese school students.

An official with the Qinghai education department told AFP on Wednesday that he was not aware of the petition.

Many Tibetans accuse China of trying to water down their culture in a bid to increase its control over Tibetan regions, where resentment against Chinese rule runs deep, and the education reforms strike at the core of these concerns.

A top official defended the plans on Friday, saying they aimed to boost both Chinese and the natve languages of minorities.

"The plan is aimed at strengthening whatever is weaker and the purpose is not to use one language to weaken another," Wang Yubo, head of the Qinghai education department, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
Rights groups say last week's peaceful protests were the most significant in the area since March 2008, when violent anti-Chinese demonstrations that started in Tibet's capital Lhasa spread to neighbouring Tibetan regions.

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