Tibetan language

Threats are being posed to the survival of Tibetan as a written and spoken language in Tibet. Tibetan language under attack - the rights of Tibetans, under Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity to "express themselves and to create and disseminate their work in the language of their choice, and particularly in their mother tongue", as well as being "entitled to quality education and training that fully respect their cultural identity". Whilst playing lip service to protecting the Tibetan language, the Chinese government seems intent on subverting and eventually eliminating the use of the Tibetan mother tongue.

According to Free Tibet Campaign, the Chinese authorities occupying Tibet are making life impossible for Tibetans who are not fluent in Mandarin Chinese by passing laws to minimise teaching of Tibetan in schools and by replacing Tibetan language with Chinese language in many spheres of public life.

"To further its goal of making Mandarin the lingua franca of Tibet, the authorities are encouraging mass migration by Han Chinese who have no need or desire to learn Tibetan. Now Tibetan parents must choose between their unique culture and their children's future." According to UNESCO there are between 6000 and 7000 spoken languages in the world today. Ironically, Tibetan is not listed on the UNESCO website as either an independent or a Chinese language. Free Tibet Campaign is calling on China to pass -and enforce- a law making Tibetan the official language of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).

The Chinese government are following a deliberate policy of extinguishing all that is Tibetan, including their own language in their own country. It may be obvious, but Tibetan should be the official language of Tibet. The world must act. Time is running out for Tibet.

http://www.freetibet.org/index.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/132d32/petition.html

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/DalaiLama/

I don't think such topic should exist in this forum.

>>>I don't think such topic should exist in this forum.

Agree. I regard that as spam, to be frank. When national interests clash, it seems like, regardless of the relative strength of the two nationalities in question (I mean, government vs government or government vs people and so on), the ones who are nationalistic are always thinking of destroying the others, no matter how soft they think their ways of supporting national causes are and how sincere they are to appeal to everybody else in the world. I don't speak for my nationality (or any, if I were); I only speak for REASON. Before you, admins, delete it, let me say here that this incident has clearly shown to me, a Chinese (by birth, and I just happen to have been Chinese), that nationalism is entirely stupid, in any forms. While dictatorship is by definition evil, I don't think a national cause is good, either, when it's so much often used against an alien people, regardless of what they have actually done to one's own culture (which is, actually, NOTHING at all).

Xie, you are taking sides.

Tibetan is the language of Tibet and I happen to be Spanish from Spain. The fact is Tibetan was the only language spoken by the Tibetan people until they were invaded.

This is a fact and the lack of justice will always be the lack of justice.

Nationalizm is alway the nationalizme of the others!
Xie: "nationalism is entirely stupid, in any forms. "
Without nationalizm there would be no peoples or territories or boundaries but a world wide continuum - how boring!