The United States will impose visa sanctions on Chinese officials pursuing “forced assimilation” of children in Tibet, where UN experts say one million children have been separated from their families. “We urge PRC [People’s Republic of China] authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. The US separately imposed sanctions in December on two top-ranking Chinese officials, Wu Yingjie and Zhang Hongbo, over what Washington said were widespread human rights violations in Tibet. Blinken in his statement cited a figure given in February by three UN experts who said that around one million Tibetan children have been forcibly removed into boarding schools. This week the Tibetan human rights group, Tibet Watch, said language advocate Tashi Wangchuk had been attacked in a hotel.

Source: The Guardian August 24, 2023 01:00 UTC