Gerald Roche
Three days after he was released from prison in December, a Tibetan village leader named Gonpo Namgyal died. As his body was being prepared for traditional Tibetan funeral rites, marks were found indicating he had been brutally tortured in jail.
His crime? Gonpo Namgyal had been part of a campaign to protect the Tibetan language in China.
Gonpo Namgyal is the victim of a slow-moving conflict that has dragged on for nearly 75 years, since China invaded Tibet in the mid-20th century. Language has been central to that conflict.
Tibetans have worked to protect the Tibetan language and resisted efforts to enforce Mandarin Chinese. Yet, Tibetan children are losing their language through enrollment in state boarding schools where they are being educated nearly exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. Tibetan is typically only taught a few times a week – not enough to sustain the language.
My research, published in a new book in 2024, provides unique insights into the struggle of other minority languages in Tibet that receive far less attention.
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