A graduation is meant to be a joyous occasion. For the 110 students who graduated from Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institution this July, however, videos showing their faces in tears have expressed only mourning. Since 1994, when the private vocational school was founded, its rich curriculum in Tibetan cultural and linguistic studies has drawn youth from across Tibet, Mongolia, and Inner Mongolia. On the Class of 2024’s graduation day, the students received the announcement that their school was being forced by authorities to close its classrooms.
In the days following, the Tibet Policy Institute (TPI) called together a panel discussion event between parliamentarians, CTA high officials, NGO leaders, and scholars from across Tibetan advocacy networks. The “Panel Discussion on the ‘Forced Closure of Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institution: Causes and Impacts’” demonstrated the continued solidarity of the Tibetan community-in-exile with Tibetans inside Tibet. On the sunny morning of 29 July, 2024, participants gathered in TPI’s library and were welcomed by TPI Deputy Director and roundtable moderator Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha.
To Parliamentarian and Editor-in-Chief of the Tibet Times Pema Tso, the first of the three panel speakers, word of Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institute’s ultimate shuttering came as a devastating shock. She heard the news via her mobile phone in the early morning of 14 July, 2024: the school had been closed two hours earlier and all students were being sent home. Parliament Member Pema Tso observes that the school had faced increasingly numerous challenges to its operation since the protests across Tibet in 2008, yet had most recently heard that the Ragya Sherig Norling community had been “relieved” by a provincial court decision that allowed its operation to continue. As similar vocational schools in the region had one by one been forced to close, Ragya Sherig Norling had maintained the final preserved curriculum in Tibetan literature, medicine, and Buddhist philosophy. The school’s rigorous curriculum was supplemented with English, computer science, engineering, medicine, filmmaking, and physical education. In an official announcement, founder Gen Jigme Gyaltsen indicated the school was closing because it was not in compliance with the Qinghai Provincial Party Committee’s standards of vocational schools. Additional details were undisclosed.
The panel’s second speaker was Shede Dawa, former student of Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institute and current researcher at Tibet Watch. During his presentation, Mr. Dawa gestured to a projected image of the school, tucked in mountain foothills and shaded by trees, noting how much taller these trees had grown since the time he attended Ragya Shering Norling. His testimony spoke to the impact this school has had in shaping the lives of Tibetan students, offering resources for self-cultivation and inspiring young Tibetan scholars to embrace of the roots of their heritage. He added that the school’s founder, Gen Jigme Gyaltsen, had emphasized “that preserving the Tibetan language and script was crucial for the survival of the Tibetan people.” Gen Jigme Gyaltsen himself was stated to have come from humble beginnings, a nomadic life, before dedicating himself to the preservation of the Tibetan language. In many ways, the room could see the impact this effort has had in the nature of Mr. Dawa’s own advocacy. One man has nurtured seeds through this institution’s pedagogical programming. For his efforts, many strong trees have risen up—between 1994 and 2021, nearly 2,300 students graduated from Ragya Sherig Norling. Its forced closure, announced to the community during the recent graduation ceremony in early July, generates uncertainty for the fate of future scholars. Joint Secretary of the Department of Education Tenzin Pema leaned into the conversation, expressing that the most brutal attempts to harm Tibetan culture were those aimed at closing local Tibetan schools.
TPI’s Director Dawa Tsering then addressed the future prospects for Tibetan language education following the closure of Ragya Sherig Norling. “Presently, the Chinese government is actively closing monasteries and Tibetan schools. This is not the first instance of such actions… These measures are part of a broader strategy by Chinese authorities to eradicate the Tibetan language and culture systematically.” Director Tsering spoke to the paralleling timelines of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Ragya Sherig Norling and the U.S. delegation’s visit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. Led by U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this delegation expressed the U.S.’ continued support for the rights of the Tibetan community to protect their cultural interests. In June, President Xi had visited the government-runGolok Ethnic Middle School and the Tsongkha Tsechen Dargyeling monestary. Director Tsering considered the possibility that the forced closure is an indication that the strength of Tibetan cultural heritage incited nervousness in President Xi, compelling him to override provincial court decisions on the school’s status.
It is not clear now what will happen to the former students of Ragya Sherig Norling Educational Institution. Access to the campus remains restricted, and the professors who had for so many years volunteered their time also face an uncertain future. Radio Free Asia reports that authorities meeting with administrators of two other recently shuttered monastic schools have demanded that former students be enrolled in state-run schools.
Roundtable participant Dr. Lobsang Yangtso, Programme and Environment Desk Coordinator for the International Tibet Network, expressed her admiration for the courage of alumni like Shede Dawa, who might now face retaliation for speaking up against the school’s closure. “There are many others like him,” she says, requesting that exiled alumni take part in showing their solidarity. In his presentation, Mr. Dawa had appealed to the foundational values of Tibetan Buddhism, which he says parallel value systems across the world. The Tibet Policy Institute hopes to stir the reactions of international allies to the Tibetan community. When asked what he would like to see in international response, TPI Deputy Director Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha expressed a simple yet clear request: “Raise the issue.”
PS: This report was written by Marie Miller, a Columbia University student currently interning with the Tibet Policy Institute.