By Kyinzom Dhongdue
Strategy and Advocacy Manager at Amnesty International Australia
I’ll be honest. As a Tibetan working in international human rights, I sometimes struggle to convey the gravity of what the Chinese Government is doing in Tibet and Xinjiang. Much of my work involves responding to immediate human rights crises – families displaced by conflict, civilians killed in airstrikes, communities devastated by war. These violations are visible and command urgent attention.
The repression in Tibet and Xinjiang look different. Today it doesn’t unfold through bombs on homes, schools or hospitals. It happens quietly through surveillance and intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and by deceptive policies and laws passed by a rubber-stamp parliament and hidden from international scrutiny. Civil society and independent media are all but non-existent, making it difficult for the world to see what is happening. Instead, carefully curated state-sanctioned images present a distorted and sanitised picture of life under Chinese rule.
Slowly but surely, Tibetan and Uyghur languages are forced out of classrooms and homes. Children are separated from their families. Religion – Buddhism or Islam – is brought under state control.
Writing oppression and assimilation into law
The Chinese Government is pursuing a long-term project of forced assimilation. Or, as described by Tibetans, a cultural genocide. It seeks to fundamentally reshape how Tibetans, Uyghurs and other peoples including Southern Mongolians speak, learn, worship, and ultimately understand who they are.
None of this is new. Tibetans have lived through these policies for decades. Uyghurs and Southern Mongolians have experienced the same.
What is new is that Beijing is giving this colonial project a legal power and framework, the so-called Ethnic Unity and Progress Law, set to come into force on 1 July 2026.
As the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Nicolas Levrat, observed: that the extinction of minority communities does not always occur through physical violence. It can also happen through policies that prevent the intergenerational transmission of language, culture and religion, ultimately leading to the extermination of a minority population within a state.
Now “progress” risks becoming another justification for erasing distinct cultures and histories.
Behind the language of “unity” and “progress”, the draconian new law transforms decades of assimilationist practices into law, giving them a much wider reach and the appearance of legitimacy.
On paper, the law promotes “unity”, “stability”, “development”, and “progress”. At face value, it sounds quite benign. However, for Tibetans and Uyghurs, “unity” has too often meant allegiance and assimilation. “Stability” has justified surveillance and repression. “Development” has displaced communities from their ancestral lands. Now “progress” risks becoming another justification for erasing distinct cultures and histories.
Understanding China’s human rights record requires understanding what China says, and what it means.
Violating international human rights conventions
The law requires fostering what the Chinese Communist Party calls a “common consciousness of the Chinese nation” in all areas including family, culture, religion, education, history, tourism, media and the internet. In practice, it extends state control into almost every aspect of life.
The rights to enjoy one’s culture, speak one’s language and practise one’s religion are protected under international human rights law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the, both of which China has ratified. It’s also protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has failed to ratify.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has recently warned that the law reinforces restrictions on freedom of expression, religion, education, language and culture, and has called for its repeal. Eight UN independent experts have also warned that many of its provisions are vague, overly broad and open to abuse.
For Tibetans, this is all too familiar
Tibetans have long endured the kind of practices enforced by the new law.
Peacefully promoting Tibetan language education has been treated as a threat to “ethnic unity”, as shown by Tibetan religious leader Choktrul Dorje Ten Rinpoche’s case. Monks and nuns have been punished for practising their religion outside state control. Even displaying a photograph of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has resulted in arrest.
The difference now is that these practices are no longer driven primarily by policy or political campaigns. They are embedded in national law.
Separating children
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the law is its focus on children. Article 15 reinforces Mandarin Chinese as the primary language of instruction in schools and educational institutions, displacing Tibetan. Language carries our history, memory, spiritual lineage and identity. It is how children inherit the stories, values and traditions that connect them to their families and communities.
Across Tibet, hundreds of thousands of children now attend Chinese state-run boarding schools, spending much of the year separated from their families and prevented from speaking their own language. Stories tell of these children returning home during school holidays only to behave like strangers in front of their family members and having lost their ability to communicate with their grandparents.
When children lose the opportunity to learn and live in their own language, they lose more than words.
Similar policies have affected Uyghur and Southern Mongolian children. When children lose the opportunity to learn and live in their own language, they lose more than words. They risk losing part of themselves, and their connection to their families, community and heritage.
Instead of responding to repeated concerns raised by UN human rights experts and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, this law entrenches those policies.
Beyond China’s borders
One provision should concern governments well beyond China.
Article 63 states that organisations and individuals outside China may be held legally liable for actions deemed to “undermine ethnic unity”. For many Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kong activists living overseas, this is a reality we already live with. Now the risks are set to increase significantly.
For years, diaspora communities have reported surveillance, harassment and intimidation, often through threats directed at family members still inside Tibet and Xinjiang. Article 63 gives a legal cover to this transnational repression already.
As someone advocating for Tibetan human rights from Australia, I cannot ignore what that means for our communities. As people living in a free democratic country, we have always seen it as our responsibility to speak up for those inside Tibet, and to exercise the freedoms that they have long been denied. Peacefully defending human rights must never be a material danger for people in Australia or indeed for families back home, and we expect our Government to fiercely oppose this heightened effort by the Chinese Government to intimidate and silence human rights defenders beyond its borders.
Breaking the silence
International human rights have a simple principle: every person has the right to enjoy their culture, speak their language, practise their religion and pass that identity on to future generations.
No government should be able to legislate those rights away, or attack those who try to defend them.
As a Tibetan, my hope is that this extraordinary move will reawaken the world to the plight of Tibetans, Uyghurs and all those suffering under the Chinese Government. Even in today’s troubled world, many are shocked to discover the enduring, slow-moving annihilation of our peoples and cultures. It’s time to speak out.
Kyinzom Dhongdue is the Strategy and Advocacy Manager at Amnesty International Australia. She was born in a Tibetan refugee camp in India and is an advocate for human rights and freedoms in Tibet. She also previously served as a Member of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile from Australasia.
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