Thread by @GJosephRoche

So, I've had a look through the @hrw report on bilingual education in Tibet & here are my thoughts [thread, starting with a tldr version].

hrw.org/news/2020/03/0…

The tldr version:

The trends described in the report constitute a disturbing assault on the linguistic rights of ALL Tibetans.

@hrw promotes solutions that would protect the linguistic rights of SOME Tibetans.

So, what are the trends? There are 4 main issues:

1. shift from Tibetan-medium to Chinese-medium education
2. rapid growth of (often Chinese medium) early childhood education
3. shift towards more assimilatory ethnic policy
4. suppression of Tibetan language activism

All of these things are happening & undermine the linguistic rights of Tibetans. The impacts are, as @hrw says, heartbreaking - these assaults on linguistic rights tear apart families & communities & lead to human suffering & ongoing trauma.

I join @hrw in condemning the actions of the PRC state in seeking to deny Tibetans their linguistic rights. Where I differ is in the proposed solution.

HRW recommends that Tibetans should be granted the right to have education in Tibetan.

Which seems like a reasonable defense of Tibetan linguistic rights, until you realize that not all Tibetans speak Tibetan.

These languages are REAL and their speakers have rights that must be defended.

I've documented the extensive literature on these languages in detail:

doi.org/10.1017/S00267…

And I've worked with Tibetans who speak these languages to document the challenges their languages face:

doi.org/10.1017/S03057…

And I've even written before about how many organizations, including HRW, doesn't take these languages into account, and why that's a problem.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

I want to focus on what it means for the 250,000 Tibetans who speak these languages when organizations like HRW promote linguistic rights for only a single language - when they promote linguistic nationalism instead of linguistic rights.

What it means is that these Tibetans are denied that most precious of all political resources - hope.

Because when a major international organizations writes a report explicitly focusing on language rights, but refuses to acknowledge the existence of your language, how can you have hope that anyone will every intervene in the state's constant attempts to eliminate you?

The solution to the Chinese state's denial of linguistic rights for Tibetans is to advocate for linguistic rights for ALL of Tibetans & for ALL their languages. Anything short of this creates a division between worthy & unworthy languages & people.

I suppose I should make it clear that the thread is finished. My recommendation: linguistic rights for everyone.