search

Tuesday 8 October 2013

China bars Tibetan students from studying abroad

DHARAMSHALA: A group of Tibetan students in Machen area in northeastern have been denied passports by Chinese authorities to study overseas. The students are now staging protests outside the provincial government offices demanding that they be allowed to go, Radio Free Asia said in a report.

The Tibetan students, mostly from poor nomadic families in Machen area of Golog region in northeastern Tibet (incorporated into China’s Qinghai province), had been selected in July based on test scores to attend schools in Japan and Washington state in the US.

“On July 8, representatives arrived at the Girls’ School of the Tibetan Pastureland to recruit students for an American school called Skagit Valley College. Verbal and written tests were conducted for those girls who graduated this year, and 42 students passed the tests and were selected to study abroad in the US. On July 9, a second group of 34—21 students from the Girls’ School of the Tibetan Pastureland and 13 from the Qinghai Institute of Nationalities—was selected to study in Japan,” RFA quoted a source as saying.

Some of the selected students have already left for Japan.

Later the authorities stopped issuing passports to the remaining students. The students protested against the unfair treatment in front of provincial capital Xining government offices. They argued that if the children of high-ranking officials are permitted to travel for study abroad, students coming from common families on the grassland should be allowed the same rights, RFA reported.

No comments:

Post a Comment