Tibet: New Evidence of Abuse in Coercive Boarding Schools Emerges as Trump Heads to China for State Visit
For Immediate Release
May 12, 2026
Contact: Lhadon Tethong I [email protected]
Tibet: New Evidence of Abuse in Coercive Boarding Schools Emerges as Trump Heads to China for State Visit
Boston – As U.S. President Donald Trump travels to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, Tibet Action Institute is calling for the closure of China’s mandatory boarding school system in Tibet as new testimony from a former student tells of “widespread” physical abuse. The boarding school system holds approximately one million Tibetan children [1].
The former student describes a “severe” environment where “broken hands, fractured fingers, and bruised backs were common.” Abuse was so routine that “students began to normalize this treatment and rarely told their parents…it was so widespread that no single incident stands out, there were simply too many.” The student was forced to attend both elementary and secondary boarding school after their parents were pressured by authorities [2].
Tibet Action Institute has documented extensive abuse and neglect in China’s colonial boarding schools across Tibet [3] but personal accounts are rare because of the extreme risk Tibetans face for any hint of opposition to Chinese government policies. Approximately one million Tibetan children have been forcibly separated from their families and placed in these state-run institutions that are designed to strip them of their language, culture, religion, and identity.
The boarding system is the cornerstone of broader policies under Xi Jinping of ethnic erasure and forced imposition of the dominant Chinese language, culture, and worldview. In March, these policies were codified in a new law that licenses Chinese authorities to pursue any person or group perceived to be promoting Tibetan language and identity or living in a way that is deemed by authorities to be not Chinese enough [4].
“The Chinese government is engaged in a systematic assault on Tibetans’ existence as a people,” said Lhadon Tethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute. “The Trump administration and governments around the globe must call on China to abolish its colonial boarding school system and repeal the dangerous new laws it is bringing in that effectively criminalize just being Tibetan.”
Notes for Editors:
[1] See Tibet Action Institute, 2021, “Separated from their Families, Hidden from the World: China’s Vast Network of Colonial Boarding Schools in Tibet.” We estimate that 900,000 students aged six to 18 are in boarding schools, the higher end of the range documented in our 2021 report, due to continued expansion of preschool and grade school boarding since 2021 and forcible transfer of more monks and nuns under 18 to state boarding schools over the past three years. 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.
[2] Interview with a Tibetan who recently left boarding school, April 2026.
[3] Tibet Action Institute, 2025, “‘When They Came to Take Our Children:’ China’s Colonial Boarding Schools and the Future of Tibet,” https://tibetaction.net/when-they-came-to-take-our-children.
[4] Tibet Action Institute, “Statement on the Passage of China’s ‘Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,’” March 12, 2026: https://tibetaction.net/authorizing-genocide-statement.
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