Tibetan educational sociologist Gal Lo can speak Chinese fluently, but she would rather not speak it.
He has been speaking to the world in recent years about the Chinese government's sweeping education reforms in the Tibetan region, and he does not want to use the language of those he identifies as colonial oppressors.
China has expanded the use of boarding schools for children as young as four and replaced Tibetan as the primary language of instruction with Chinese.
The Chinese government claims these reforms will best prepare Tibetan children, whose main language of communication is Mandarin, for adult life.
However, Dr. Gal Lo disagrees and believes that the Chinese government's real aim is to undermine Tibetan identity by targeting the youngest members of society.
“They are designing curricula that will produce people who will not be able to practice their language and culture in the future,” he says.
“China is using education as a way to downplay the social capabilities of Tibetans. No one will be able to resist their rule.”
Foreign human rights groups have highlighted China's alleged human rights abuses in Tibet for decades, but they have received less attention in recent years.
The focus has shifted to the Chinese government's treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
But activists say Chinese authorities are also busy in Tibet.
In recent years, the Chinese government has closed village schools and private Tibetan-teaching schools and expanded the use of boarding schools.
They have been in operation for decades in many sparsely populated regions of China, but appear to be the primary means of education in the Tibetan region.
Campaigners estimate that 80% of Tibetan children, perhaps 1 million pupils, are currently taught in boarding schools from pre-school onwards.
You can listen to the BBC World Service Assignment's radio documentary 'Educating Tibet' here.
The Chinese Embassy in London said in a statement to the BBC that the policy was necessary.
“The population is so dispersed that children have to travel long distances to attend school, which is extremely inconvenient,” the report said.
“If we built schools in every place where students live, it would be very difficult to get enough teachers and the quality of education. That's why local governments set up boarding schools.”
But opponents say this type of schooling causes psychological trauma for children who are forcibly separated from their families and pressured to send their children away.
“The most difficult thing in my life was losing my family,” said a Tibetan teenager who attended boarding school for several years until she was 10.
She has since fled Tibet and now lives in India. The BBC spoke to her after contacting her through her campaign group.
“There were many other children crying because they wanted to see their families,” she said. “Some young children woke up in the middle of the night and ran to the school gate crying.”
The BBC spoke to other Tibetan exiles who had heard similar complaints from relatives still living in their homeland.
Dr. Gal Roe has a unique story about her two grandnieces who were sent to boarding school when they were just 4 and 6 years old.
After observing them at a family dinner, he finds them awkward speaking their native language.
“The way they were sitting there, I thought maybe they didn't feel comfortable sharing the same identity as the family. They were like guests,” he said.
This prompted a sociologist working at Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou at the time to visit 50 Tibetan boarding schools to see if it was the same for other children. they were.
Dr. Gal Roe compares these boarding schools to those that once operated in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Indigenous children were separated from their families during the assimilation process, a process that is now discredited.
“These children are completely cut off from their cultural roots and emotional connection to their parents, family and community,” he says.
The second major change to the education system concerns the Tibetan language, a rich oral and written tradition dating back more than 1,000 years.
China has replaced Tibetan with Chinese as the main language of instruction.
The Chinese embassy said China's ethnic minorities have the “freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages.”
However, one student the BBC spoke to said only Chinese people were encouraged at her school.
“All classes were taught in Chinese, except for the Tibetan language class. Our school had a big library, but there were no Tibetan books in it,” she said. Ta.
According to Professor Alexandra Zantaki, the UN special rapporteur on cultural rights, this policy appears to be contrary to international human rights law.
She said parents have the right to send their children to schools that use the language of their choice.
“This means that one or two hours is not enough to teach a foreign language,” she says.
Just over a year ago, Professor Zantaki and two other UN rapporteurs sent a letter to China detailing a series of complaints about education reforms in Tibet.
The letter suggests that China is trying to “homogenize” its ethnic minorities, so that they become more Chinese, and that Mandarin is considered a means to achieve that goal. ing.
Dr. Gal Lo remembers getting into an argument with the vice president of a university in Yunnan province, where he was assigned after Lanzhou. This shows how Chinese is valued more highly than other languages.
“One day he came to my office and said, 'You're producing articles on Tibet, but you're not producing articles on China,'” the sociologist recalled.
“Hearing that made me uncomfortable and angry. I told him I didn't want to write about China.'' The administrator turned red and stormed out.
Shortly after that incident, Dr. Gal Lo fled China in 2020 and now lives in Canada, from where he is running a campaign highlighting the changes in education taking place in Tibet.
The Chinese government fiercely resists the narrative advocated by activists like him. The country has launched a propaganda campaign to convince the world that the reforms are beneficial.
It also seeks to discredit those who claim otherwise. Professor Zantaki was accused by China of spreading fake news. Dr. Gal Roe is also a target. His authority to speak out on the issue has been questioned in Chinese state media.
Nevertheless, he is undaunted by his pessimism about the future of Tibetan language and culture and the region's youth.
“Our children are becoming an alienated generation. Many will not fit into either Chinese or Tibetan society.”