Volker Türk Break the Silence

You recently warned that China's new Ethnic Unity Law risks accelerating the assimilation of Tibetans and other peoples and eroding their distinct identities.

We now call on you to break your silence on the most dangerous manifestation of this crisis in Tibet: the approximately one million Tibetan children separated from their families and forced into China's state-run residential boarding schools where they face indoctrination, cultural and linguistic erasure, and serious risk of abuse and neglect.

Despite years of direct appeals, extensive documentation, and unprecedented alarm from UN human rights experts, you have never once publicly named China's residential boarding school system in Tibet.

On July 2, 2026, Lobga Rangzen self-immolated on the doorstep of the United Nations in New York and subsequently died. His tragic death was a public act of protest not only against China's escalating campaign to eliminate Tibet's distinct national, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity, but against the failure of the United Nations to meaningfully confront a crisis unfolding in plain sight.

Your mandate is to protect human rights globally, without fear or favour. Yet you have not spoken out as almost 80% of Tibetan students are forced to live in state-run residential boarding schools intended to erase their language and identity, and where they face the risk of abuse, neglect, and deep psychological harm.

We demand that you:

Publicly call on China to immediately abolish the colonial residential boarding school system in Tibet and guarantee Tibetan children high-quality, mother tongue-based education while living with their families.

Establish an independent UN investigation into China's intensifying campaign of forced assimilation, cultural destruction, and grave human rights violations in Tibet, including the boarding school system.

High Commissioner Türk, you have seen the evidence. Your own experts have sounded the alarm. Hundreds of thousands have appealed to you.

History will judge whether you defended one million Tibetan children and the survival of an ancient culture—or bowed to power as China used the worst tools of colonialism to erase their identity.