On China Visit, Carney Must Call for Closure of Tibet’s Residential Schools
Contact:
Lhadon Tethong I [email protected]
Nearly One Million Tibetan Children Forcibly Separated from Families, Language, Culture
Boston – As Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares for his first official visit to China next week – the first visit by a Canadian Prime Minister since 2017– Tibet Action Institute urges him to raise directly with President Xi Jinping China’s vast system of mandatory residential schools in Tibet.
An estimated one million Tibetan children have been forcibly separated from their families and placed in state-run institutions designed to strip them of their language, culture, religion, and identity [1]. At least 78 percent of Tibetan students aged six to 18, along with an estimated 100,000 preschool-aged children, are confined to these institutions—posing an existential threat to the survival of Tibetans as a distinct people [2].
“Prime Minister Carney must raise Tibet’s residential schools directly with President Xi Jinping,” said Lhadon Tethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute and a Tibetan-Canadian. “Canada knows from painful experience the harm caused when children are forcibly separated from their families, language, and culture. As a country confronting the devastating legacy of its own residential school system, Canada has a moral responsibility to oppose similar abuses wherever they occur.”
In May 2025, Tibet Action Institute released new evidence documenting Tibetan children’s vulnerability to neglect and abuse in these schools, including firsthand accounts of forced indoctrination, language loss, and lasting trauma [3]. These findings build on Tibet Action Institute’s 2021 report that exposed the scale and coercive nature of the system and prompted strong condemnation from UN human rights experts and treaty bodies.
With Tibet closed to independent journalists, diplomats, and international human rights observers, one of the few meaningful forms of leverage is for China’s trading partners to raise these abuses directly and consistently in bilateral talks. This does not require ending trade discussions or cooperation on shared global challenges, but it does require pairing economic engagement with principled diplomacy.
Prime Minister Carney’s visit comes at a critical moment. As Canada seeks to deepen economic engagement with China, human rights – especially the rights of children – must not be sidelined.
Tibet Action Institute calls on Prime Minister Carney to:
- Raise China’s residential boarding school system in Tibet directly with President Xi Jinping;
- Publicly call on the Chinese government to abolish the coercive residential boarding school system in Tibet;
- Press China to grant full and unfettered access to all areas of Tibet [4], including outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, for international observers and human rights experts.
Canada has demonstrated leadership on this issue in recent years, including recommending that China abolish mandatory residential schools in Tibet during China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in January 2024 [5], and issuing a joint statement at the 79th Session of the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in October 2024 condemning human rights violations in Tibet and East Turkistan (Ch: Xinjiang) [6]. China rejected Canada’s recommendations and continues to expand its boarding school system for Tibetan children, including forcibly enrolling preschool children as young as four and five years old.
For Tibetan families, international advocacy offers rare and vital hope. For Canada, raising Tibet—particularly the issue of residential boarding schools—is not only a matter of foreign policy but also a test of whether the hard lessons of its own history will guide the defense of children beyond its borders.
Notes for Editors:
[1] In December 2021, Tibet Action Institute’s report, “Separated from their Families, Hidden from the World: China’s Vast Network of Colonial Boarding Schools in Tibet,” revealed that Tibet’s education system had become primarily residential, with approximately 800,000-900,000 Tibetan students ages six to 18 living in a vast system of Chinese government-run colonial boarding schools. It alerted the world to the plight of Tibetan children and parents and led UN experts to express alarm at a residential school system that they said was “aimed at assimilating Tibetan people culturally, religiously and linguistically.”
[2] This number includes 900,000 students aged six to 18, the higher end of the range documented in Tibet Action Institute’s 2021 report, which we believe is more accurate due to continued expansion of preschool and grade school boarding and forcible transfer of more monks and nuns under 18 to state boarding schools over the past three years. Additionally, fieldwork by Dr. Gyal Lo, a Tibetan educational sociologist who fled Tibet and China in 2020 — now employed by Tibet Action Institute — confirms the existence of a system of colonial boarding preschools for rural Tibetan children that he estimates houses 100,000 boarding preschoolers aged four to six. (See https://tibetaction.net/eyewitness-confirms-mandatory-boarding-preschools-operating-across-tibet).
[3] “‘When They Came to Take Our Children’: China’s Colonial Boarding Schools and the Future of Tibet.” Tibet Action Institute, 2025 https://tibetaction.net/when-they-came-to-take-our-children/
[4] ‘Tibet’ refers to the three Tibetan provinces of Amdo, Kham and U-Tsang. In the 1960s, the Chinese government split Tibet into new administrative divisions: the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), and Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures and Counties within Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. When the Chinese government references Tibet, it is referring to the TAR.
[5] At China’s Universal Periodic Review in January 2024, Canada was among States that raised concerns about coercive policies including China’s residential boarding school system in Tibet and recommended that China abolish such practices and allow unfettered access for monitoring. Official UPR documentation including recommendations are available via the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/cn-index
[6] Joint Statement on the Human Rights Situation in Xinjiang and Tibet. UNGA 79th Third Committee, October 22, 2024 https://www.un.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/jointstatement102224.html
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