Tibetan students protest for their own language

Students in Tongren, western China, protested last week about the rumoured removal of the Tibetan language from textbooks. While China is committed to promoting minority languages, locals fear that there have already been moves to replace existing Tibetan language books with books only in Mandarin Chinese (the national language).

Thousands of students reportedly marched in support of continued teaching in the Tibetan language. The Chinese government has roundly denied that there will be any changes, and say that the students merely misunderstand educational policies.

Luckily, there haven’t been any violent repercussions so far, as there were in the nationalist protests in Tibet two years ago.

Sources: thestar.com, Washington Times.