Tibetan sources who spoke to Radio Free Asia linked the closures to the Chinese government’s education policies and its promotion of the Ethnic Unity and Progress Law, which took effect on July 1, 2026. They said the shutdowns could further limit opportunities for Tibetan children to learn their mother tongue and cultural traditions.
Yes, they did. And today those are free states. Which now punish their Russian (Russian speaking, mind you) minorities.
Look, I don’t even care that much whether some states decide to suppress languages of their minorities. I care about the messaging. If the virtue signalling is “it is bad to try to suppress language and culture of a minority in the state school system”, I can get behind that. But it needs to be a universal concept, then. Especially around our allies. Like, of course China is doing evil shit, I don’t expect them to do stuff differently. But I expect my allies and friends to do better.
I’ll never understand in these kind of discussions how that concept of using the same scope is difficult, but here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Messaging is nice in a black and white world. Russians invaded, annexed and colonized parts of countries with the intent of becoming the majority / russifying. It was used as an element of cultural genocide (similar to what we are seeing in China with Tibetans and Uighurs.)
Even today, we can literally point at the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an ongoing example of “protection of Russian minorities” as a pretext for an unnecessary war on an independent and sovereign state separate from Russia. So yes, ideally, we should be able to say that ALL minorities in all countries regardless of historical precedent should be properly protected, but we live in a reality where that goodwill and weakness will be exploited by a Russia with imperial ambitions as casus belli for invasion of the Baltics. Forgive me if I take the Baltic’s fear of invasion at face value, they were still occupied 36 years ago.
And finally, just to flip the script here a little, the Russians are not exactly saints when it comes to protecting minority languages. Go read about Karelia for gods sakes. It was Finnish less than a hundred years ago.
Never ponder what happened to indigenous inhabitants of Ingria :v
edit: I’m confused as to why you upovted this if you disagree with the premise of west applying double standards
Yeah, because Russia will immediately cease to threaten the Baltics, if they have eradicated the Russian language in some 6-8 generations.
Nowhere did I say that it is good when e.g. Russia does it?!
It’s strange, because it’s just so incompatible with how I feel. Like, I have higher standars for my friends and me than for strangers, but in politics it’s the other way round, where friends and allies can do whatever and are never called out.