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American biotech company Thermo Fisher will no longer sell its DNA identification kits and equipment in Tibet in response to human rights concerns with China’s use of biometric surveillance in the area, according to The World. The restriction does not extend to all of China.

Over the past six years, China has collected 900,000 to 1.2 million DNA samples from Tibetan adults and children – enough to make up one third of the region’s population.

In an interview with The World, Emile Dirks, researcher at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab research institute, says he credits the decision to cease sales to advocacy from Students for a Free Tibet, Human Rights Watch, and bioethics researcher Yves Moreau.

“The police in Tibet have quite a horrendous record of human rights abuses within that region,” says Dirks. “Mass DNA collection is one more reminder that the people of Tibet have that they are under the constant watch and monitoring of the state” and is “a gross violation of the right to individual privacy that people within that region should enjoy,” he continues.

In October 2023, a special U.S. Congressional commission called on the departments of Commerce, State, and Treasury to restrict the export of DNA kits to China as they were being used “for political identification and racial profiling.” Dirks, likewise, says DNA collection proceeds in Tibet without any relation to police work.

Thermo Fisher defended its contracts in China last year, saying they were “to match only the needs of routine police casework and forensic investigations.”

This follows recent news that the Chinese government has also collected DNA samples from over 200 Uyghurs and Kazakh people, two ethnic minority groups in the Xinjiang region of China, for genetic sequencing without meeting ethical standards.

At the United Nations, the tables are being cleared for the Universal Periodic Review, a roughly quadrennial process where member states human rights situation comes under scrutiny. It could be a particularly troubling time for China given its discord with the West, that could see more countries taking a close look at Beijing’s human rights practices.

Some of these relate to China’s education policies in Tibet that Dr Gyal Lo, a Canada-based Tibetan sociologist describes as “colonial”. In an interview with StratNews Global, he said that after closely studying the education system, he was able to draw some conclusions.

“While teachers are teaching, students are learning and schools are running, yet our society is not making any progress. So, what is wrong with our education system. We analysed the curriculum and the education policy and I was the first to academically describe China’s school system in Tibet as colonial boarding schools”, he said.

The system he said, draws from China’s education policy that has two aspects: one hidden and the other that is “on the table”.

“When you read what’s on the table, there’s no problem, but it’s in the implementation of the document on the ground that the double game is played. One should closely watch how it is implemented, since it is done in a way they want.”

Gyal Lo says the hidden policy is what matters here for this is what has been at play for over six decades. The hidden policy limits instruction in Tibetan language, culture and tradition to about 20%. Earlier it was more but since Xi Jinping took over in 2008, the approach has changed.

“They want one culture, one nation one language. So, there’s no space for our culture and language. This is I think is China’s top ideological conspiracy being practiced over many decades in Tibetan society. Our school system produces cheap labour. They have weaponised the school system to turn four generations of Tibetans into cheap labour.”

The Chinese of course deny any wrongdoing in Tibet and when pressed, resort to circumlocution. For instance, they claim that the number of students in boarding schools is low, and only cite the case of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which is sparsely populated. But Dr Gyal Lo points to the other regions of Tibet the Chinese prefer not to talk about: Utsang, Amdo and Kham populated by 2/3rds of ethnic Tibetans.

Key questions put to the Chinese rarely elicit a reply, of if they do, it is usually a lie, he says. At the same time, he feels the UN is the best place to put pressure on China to clean up its act in Tibet. The Chinese tend to listen to those who are rich and powerful while ignoring the weak.

This has implications for India. If Tibetan language and culture are safeguarded and allowed to be practiced, India is safe given the knowledge and awareness each culture has of the other. But if the colonial boarding schools become the norm in Tibet, with its focus on Sinicizing Tibetans, then Tibetans thinking like Chinese will only deepen India’s insecurity.

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company that makes scientific instruments, chemicals and even consumables has said that it was stopping sale of forensic tech and equipment in Tibet which can potentially be used to identify individuals, reported Reuters, citing company spokesperson.

In past, the company had made dedicated human identification (HID) available in Tibet. The spokesperson reportedly said that the technology was used for functions such as tracking criminals.

The spokesperson said that the sales of the technology and equipments were “consistent with routine forensic investigation in an area of this size” but “based on a number of factors we made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of HID products in the region”.

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company that makes scientific instruments, chemicals and even consumables has said that it was stopping sale of forensic tech and equipment in Tibet which can potentially be used to identify individuals, reported Reuters, citing company spokesperson.

In past, the company had made dedicated human identification (HID) available in Tibet. The spokesperson reportedly said that the technology was used for functions such as tracking criminals.

The spokesperson said that the sales of the technology and equipments were “consistent with routine forensic investigation in an area of this size” but “based on a number of factors we made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of HID products in the region”.

China, which controls Tibet, has been drawing international flak over human rights issues, particularly of the Uyghur Muslims and also for stifling religious and cultural freedoms in predominantly Buddhist Tibet. However, China vigorously denies all such allegations.

Thermo Fisher Scientific reportedly denied to specify reason for its latest decision to stop sale of forensic tech and equipment in Tibet.

In 2019, the company took a similar decision to stop sale of genetic sequencing equipment in China’s Xinjiang. There are allegations that China is building DNA database for Uyghurs, a charge authorities deny.

Shareholders of Thermo Fisher Scientific have welcomed the company’s latest decision saying that some of its tech had a risk of being used by law enforcers to commit human rights violations.

Reuters reported that Azzad Asset Management, one of the shareholders, had written a letter to Thermo Fisher last month saying it had withdrawn a shareholder proposal regarding human rights after the US firm said it would cease HID product sales in Tibet as of Dec 31, 2023.

Thermo Fisher Scientific declined to comment on why it waited for many days after its initial announcement about the ban and its actual implementation, said Reuters.

Tibet is no longer “Tibet,” not in China anyway.

Chinese officials are increasingly using the term “Xizang,” the official English spelling of the name that China’s ethnic Han majority applies to the Tibetan homeland on the country’s far western frontier.

The shift dovetails with a broad assimilation drive targeted at China’s ethnic minorities and outlying regions that has intensified under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has sought to forge a singular national identity—one centered on the Han majority and loyalty to the Communist Party.

Amid these efforts, Beijing has also been stepping up preparations for a fight over the choice of successor to the current Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, who turns 89 in July. China’s officially atheist leadership has denounced him as a separatist, and insisted that they get to choose the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

For decades, Chinese officials and state media typically referred to “Tibet” in English-language communications, applying a name widely used across the West. That began to change in recent years, as China’s Foreign Ministry and a nationalistic party tabloid switched to using “Xizang,” the standard Romanization of the region’s Mandarin Chinese name that is pronounced, roughly, “shee-ZAHNG.”

Beijing has stepped up its usage of the “Xizang” label in recent months. At an academic seminar in August, Chinese scholars advocated replacing English references to “Tibet” with “Xizang,” a view that the party agency handling ethnic affairs promoted on social media. Two months later, the Chinese government arranged a diplomatic conference in the Tibetan city of Nyingchi, titled “Xizang Trans-Himalayan Forum for International Cooperation,” where Tibet was generally referred to as “Xizang” in English.

Major state-media outlets, such as the Xinhua News Agency, increasingly referred to “Xizang” in English-language reports.

The most authoritative use of “Xizang” came in November, when the Chinese government’s top publicity office published a white paper on the “Governance of Xizang,” departing from references to “Tibet” used in previous policy documents.

The semantic switch opens a new front in the Communist Party’s efforts to reshape global narratives on China in favor of its preferred nomenclature, particularly on what Beijing regards as its core interests, experts say.

Chinese officials will seek to popularize the “Xizang” label on the international stage—particularly in the Global South—by appealing to anti-Western sentiment, said Matthew Akester, an independent Tibet researcher based in the Indian town of Dharamshala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is located. “There is an international pro-China constituency that may well be turned by something like that.”

Beijing might eventually use coercion as well, Akester says, including economic pressure and commercial boycotts against governments and businesses that continue to refer to “Tibet.” “There will be consequences for not using ‘Xizang,’” he predicted.

The Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which handles religious and ethnic affairs; the State Council Information Office, the Chinese government’s publicity arm; and China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The adoption of the “Xizang” label is “designed to fulfill their political ambition of legitimizing their claim over Tibet,” said Tenzin Lekshay, a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile. “The Sino-Tibet conflict is longstanding, and changing the name will not resolve the problem,” he said. “Rather, it will create more complexity.”

China’s Communist Party has sought to consolidate its control over Tibet since sending troops into the region in 1950. Since then, Beijing has directed long-running efforts to assimilate ethnic Tibetans and quash what it calls separatist forces led by the Dalai Lama, who was a teenager when the People’s Republic took control of Tibet.

The assimilation drive intensified after Xi took power in late 2012. While his predecessors relied more on economic development as a way to naturally integrate ethnic minorities, he has taken a comparatively hard-line approach, with the party taking an active role in reshaping cultural identities.

In Tibet, Beijing has in recent years imposed increased restrictions on Tibetan religion, education and language, while boosting the government’s ability to surveil residents. Chinese officials generally reject claims that they are diluting or suppressing Tibetan culture, instead arguing that the Communist Party has improved lives and livelihoods for people in Tibet, while upholding their religious and ethnic identities.

Historians say the present-day Chinese name for Tibet, “Xizang,” dates back to China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing. That name came from a Chinese transliteration of “Gtsang”—a reference to the name of one area within historical Tibet.

“The name ‘Xizang’ is wholly imbued with a Chinese viewpoint,” Elliot Sperling, an Indiana University historian of Tibet, wrote in 2011. “Indeed, one might say that use of that name subliminally reinforces it: The first syllable means ‘West;’ i.e., it situates Tibet according to the way it’s perceived from China.”

“The meaning of Xizang is essentially determined by politics,” Sperling wrote, pointing to differences in how various Chinese regimes defined the region’s boundaries. China’s current government doesn’t have an officially authorized Chinese term for “the traditional and historic realm of Tibet,” wrote Sperling, who died in 2017.

Chinese authorities have used “Xizang” in the past, though sporadically. For instance, the Tibet regional government has used xizang.gov.cn as the main address for its website since at least the mid-2000s, though Chinese officials at the time generally referred to “Tibet” in English remarks.

“Tibet” remained the prevalent English label well into the Xi era. For instance, a government white paper published in 2021 by the State Council Information Office was titled “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity.”

The latest white paper, published in November, identifies the region as “Xizang” throughout the text, though “Tibet” still appeared in references to an airline and a museum that bear the name, as well as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It also used “Tibetan” as a demonym and adjective in references to local residents and culture.

China’s Foreign Ministry spearheaded the use of “Xizang,” using the standard Romanization in official statements and translations with increasing frequency over recent years. For instance, when Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted an event on Tibet in 2021, the ministry published a summary of his remarks that referred to the region as “Xizang.”

Global Times, a nationalistic party-run tabloid, has also been rendering Tibet as “Xizang” in its English-language reports about the region since 2021.

The party’s United Front Work Department published a social-media post in August that discussed the “Xizang” label, citing Chinese academics as saying that “Xizang” is a more accurate English name for China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, a provincial-level administrative division that Beijing formally set up in the 1960s.

The article noted that “Tibet” has often been used to refer more broadly to areas influenced by Tibetan culture, which includes the Tibet Autonomous Region and parts of neighboring provinces. “This wrong concept has been around for a long time,” and distorted international views about the geographical scope of Xizang, Wang Linping, a professor at Harbin Engineering University, was quoted as saying.

The article also argued that rendering Tibet as “Xizang” is justified for the sake of complying with regulatory requirements, citing a Chinese government decision in 1978 to uniformly use Beijing’s official Pinyin Romanization system to spell the names of Chinese people and places.

“Using Pinyin means acting in accordance with the law and implementing our relevant laws and regulations,” Lian Xiangmin, deputy director-general of the state-affiliated China Tibetology Research Center, was quoted as saying.

Some people in the West will have different opinions, but China handles Tibet-related affairs following the law, Lian said. “Whether they can accept it or not is their problem.”

A U.S. biotech company has halted sales of its DNA testing products in the Chinese ethnic region of Tibet, as lawmakers mull export controls to keep Beijing from using American products to conduct massive surveillance of its own citizens.

Thermo Fisher, based in Waltham, Mass., said in a statement that it made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of human identification products in Tibet “based on a number of factors.” It did not specify the “factors.” The news site Axios first revealed Thermo Fisher’s decision this week.

The move by the biotech company, which in 2019 took similar measures in the ethnic region of Xinjiang, came at a time of concerns on the Capitol Hill over Beijing’s human rights record. About a year ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers demanded to know if the company was certain its equipment was not used to aid or abet rights abuses in China, following reports that the Chinese government had been collecting DNA data from hundreds of thousands of Tibetans. Beijing faces criticisms for its rule in Tibet, after the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader for most Tibetans, was forced to flee in 1959 when a revolt failed.

China has denied the allegation. “It is groundless accusation saying that the Chinese government is collecting DNA data from ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Xizang to strengthen surveillance,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, referring to Tibet by its Chinese name of Xizang. “China is a country under the rule of law, and the privacy of Chinese citizens is fully protected by law, regardless of their ethnicity.”

The company’s action reflects the intensifying scrutiny U.S. firms face when doing business with China. The Biden administration says it looks to protect national security and press China on human rights while maintaining cooperation and keeping tensions from spiraling out of control. It says it seeks to “responsibly manage” the U.S.-China economic relationship.

The administration last August restricted U.S. investments in sensitive technologies that could boost China’s military powers, following a ban on most advanced computer chips. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. will use its tools to protect human rights, and the U.S. already bans import of goods made with forced labor in the ethnic region of Xinjiang in China’s northwest.

Beijing argues that Washington is using the human rights issue to suppress China’s growth.

“China opposes the relevant parties politicizing normal economic cooperation and stopping cooperation with China based on groundless lies,” Liu said.

In a January 2023 response to U.S. lawmakers, Thermo Fisher said it was confident that its products were “being used for their intended use in Tibet, namely police casework and forensics.” In its statement emailed to the AP on Thursday, Thermo Fisher said the sales of its human identification products in Tibet had been “consistent with routine forensic investigation in an area of this size.” It declined further comment.

Lawmakers and rights advocates applauded Thermo Fisher’s decision to pull out of Tibet but urged the company to do more.

“I remain concerned that the continued sale of these products throughout the rest of China will continue to enable the CCP’s techno totalitarian surveillance state,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “Thermo Fisher needs to immediately stop the sale of all DNA collection kits to all of China.”

Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said the decision by Thermo-Fisher was “a long-overdue step to remove the company from further complicity in egregious human rights abuses.”

The U.S. Commerce Department should continue to make “more systematic efforts” to prevent American companies from working with China’s police and security apparatus in Tibet, Smith said.

“There is much more work to be done to starve the globe’s dictators and authoritarians of the PRC’s technological tools of repression — particularly when abetted by U.S. corporations,” the congressman said, referring to China by its official name, the People’s Republic of China, or the PRC.

Maya Wang, interim China director at Human Rights Watch, praised Thermo Fisher for its action but said, “This is not enough,” and the company should do more to ensure its products sold elsewhere in China are not contributing to mass surveillance.

The US biotech company Thermo Fisher has halted sales of its DNA identification kits in Tibet, nearly five years after it made a similar commitment about the sale of its products in the neighbouring western Chinese region of Xinjiang.

It decided to stop sales in Tibet after months of complaints from rights groups and investors that the technology may be used in a way that abuses human rights. The company said that the decision was made in the middle of 2023, but it was only revealed to investors late last month.

Human rights experts and exiles have said there are pervasive levels of surveillance in Tibet, one of the most tightly controlled parts of China. Foreigners cannot freely visit and many exiled Tibetans have limited contact with their relatives there, making it hard for information to reach the outside world.

Conditions have been likened to those in Xinjiang, where rights groups said that the authorities are building a DNA database for Uyghur Muslims. The authorities have denied the accusations.

Beijing worries about separatism in both regions. The regions’ dominant ethnic groups practise cultures and faiths that are different from the Chinese Han majority, and which the Chinese Communist party views with suspicion.

In 2022, the Intercept reported that Tibetan police signed a deal to purchase more than $160,000 worth of DNA profiling kits from Thermo Fisher. Separately, Human Rights Watch reported that mass DNA collection was taking place across Tibet, including from boys as young as five. Citizen Lab, a research institute at the University of Toronto, estimated that between 2016 and 2022, up to one-third of Tibet’s population gave DNA samples to the police.

In 2019, Thermo Fisher said it would stop selling its DNA kits in Xinjiang, citing its ethics code. Last month the Guardian revealed that an academic paper published in 2019 which evaluated Thermo Fisher’s genetic sequencing technology on minorities in Xinjiang had been retracted because of concerns that the DNA samples had not been obtained with the proper consent. The study was conducted by university researchers, not Thermo Fisher’s own scientists.

Campaigners said DNA sampling in Tibet should also be closely scrutinised. Tibetans are monitored “constantly”, said Tenzin Rabga Tashi, an activist with Free Tibet, a London-based NGO. He said the kits would have enhanced the Chinese government’s ability to surveil the local population.

Responding to Thermo Fisher’s decision on Thursday, the Global Times, a Chinese state media tabloid, said “the narrative that the ‘Chinese government is collecting DNA data in Xizang [Tibet] for surveillance’ comes out of nowhere. Collecting DNA data in China has been an effective approach for public security organs in the country to trace missing children and combat human trafficking.”

Thermo Fisher said its sales in Tibet “are consistent with routine forensic investigation in an area of this size” and that its human identification technology “is used for important forensic applications, from tracking down criminals, to stopping human trafficking and freeing the unjustly accused”. It did not elaborate on the reasons for halting sales to Tibet.

Joshua Brockwell, investment communications director for Azzad Asset Management, said: “As investors of conscience, Azzad is pleased that our calls on Thermo Fisher to make the right choice and help end biometric repression as a tool of Chinese authoritarian surveillance have been heeded.”

Yves Moreau, a professor of engineering at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, who focuses on DNA analysis, said: “The persecution of Tibetans and control of the Tibetan plateau relies on a hi-tech system of digital authoritarianism … DNA databases are a piece of this architecture of total surveillance … By selling its products to Tibetan public security, Thermo Fisher was aiding and abetting those abuses.”

Thermo Fisher’s business in China has come under particular scrutiny because the company’s chief executive, Marc Casper, also chairs the US-China Business Council. In November, he hosted a $40,000 per table dinner to welcome China’s president, Xi Jinping, to San Francisco. At the dinner, Casper said that companies like Thermo Fisher “have been at the forefront of China’s modernisation” and cited the fact that the “vast majority” of the company’s employees were in the US and China.

Casper’s role on the council “destroys any ignorance [the company] can claim, particularly after the company withdrew from the Uyghur region in 2019”, said John Jones, the head of campaigns at Free Tibet.

In 2022, the company generated revenue of $3.8bn in China, up from $3.4bn the previous year. China is Thermo Fisher’s biggest market outside the US.

US-based Biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific said it had halted sales of its DNA collection kits to Chinese-occupied Tibet after criticism from rights groups and pressure from Congress, reported axios.com Jan 3, citing an emailed statement from the company. China is accused of building a DNA data base for subjecting the Tibetan people to ethnic profiling and other possible abuses.

“Based on a number of factors we made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of HID products in the region and no longer sell our human identification technology in the Tibet Autonomous Region,” it quoted a Thermo Fisher spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson has said the company’s HID (human identification) technology had “important forensic applications, from tracking down criminals, to stopping human trafficking and freeing the unjustly accused” and maintained that its HID sales in Tibet were “consistent with routine forensic investigation in an area of this size”.

The report said that in 2022, reports based on Chinese government documents revealed Chinese police were engaging in mass DNA collection in Tibet; and they had purchased equipment from Thermo Fisher.

Since then, the company has faced pressure to cease sales of its products in Tibet.

And in late 2022, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s commissioners wrote a letter to Thermo Fisher president and CEO Marc Casper, expressing concern about the company’s sales in Tibet and asking Casper to undertake a “rigorous review” of how its products were being used in the region.

Also, Human Rights Watch as well as Tibetan groups have persistently called for the company to end the sales to Chinese-ruled Tibet.

“This is the power of our collective organizing,” the report quoted Ms Chemi Lhamo, campaign director at Students for a Free Tibet, as saying.

“Companies must do better in critically examining the reality of the brutal repression and human rights violations of Tibetans in occupied Tibet, rather than allowing their heads to be turned by the promise of profits from sales and access to cheap labour in China.”

Ms Tencho Gyatso, President of Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, has, “This is a victory that shows collective activism for Tibet makes a real difference. Now we must go further, from pressuring businesses to end their complicity in China’s human rights abuses against Tibetans, to pushing the Chinese government to resolve its decades-long occupation of Tibet through peaceful dialogue with Tibetan leaders.”

The International Tibet Network, umbrella body for a network of Tibet support groups across the world, has said Jan 3 that Thermo-Fisher had sent a letter to shareholders last month, stating it would halt all direct and indirect sales of human identification products to Tibet.

In a victory for Tibet activists, biotechnology firm Thermo Fisher Scientific says it has stopped selling kits reportedly used for mass DNA collection in a region of Chinese-occupied Tibet.

“Based on a number of factors we made the decision in mid-2023 to cease sales of [human identification] products in the region and no longer sell our human identification technology in the Tibet Autonomous Region,” a spokesperson for the Boston-based company told Axios.

According to reports, China’s police collected DNA from about 1 million residents of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which spans roughly half of Tibet.

China has illegally occupied Tibet for 65 years, turning it into the least-free country on Earth alongside South Sudan and Syria, according to the watchdog group Freedom House.

Thermo Fisher’s statement that it has stopped selling its DNA collection kits in the TAR follows a year of heavy campaigning by Tibet activists, including the groups Students for a Free Tibet, Free Tibet and the International Tibet Network.

The International Tibet Network said today that Thermo-Fisher sent a letter to shareholders last month stating that it would halt all direct and indirect sales of human identification products to Tibet.

“The International Campaign for Tibet welcomes this news of Thermo Fisher halting its DNA collection kit sales in the TAR,” ICT President Tencho Gyatso said. “This is a victory that shows collective activism for Tibet makes a real difference. Now we must go further, from pressuring businesses to end their complicity in China’s human rights abuses against Tibetans, to pushing the Chinese government to resolve its decades-long occupation of Tibet through peaceful dialogue with Tibetan leaders.”

Mass DNA collection in Tibet
In September 2022, Citizen Lab reported that China’s police may have gathered about 920,000 to 1.2 million DNA samples in the Tibet Autonomous Region over the prior six years. Those figures represent one-quarter to one-third of the region’s total population.

That same month, Human Rights Watch said that China’s authorities were systematically collecting DNA from residents of the TAR, including by taking blood from children as young as 5 without their parents’ consent.

According to Citizen Lab, China’s DNA collection program is unrelated to criminal justice. “[O]ur analysis indicates that for years police across Tibet have collected DNA samples from men, women, and children, none of whom appear to be criminal suspects,” Citizen Lab says in its report.

Police were also not targeting specific groups like activists or government critics. Instead, they were collecting DNA from entire communities.

Human Rights Watch says in its report that, “There is no publicly available evidence suggesting people can decline to participate” in the DNA collection.

US officials
US government officials have spoken up forcefully about China’s mass DNA collection in Tibet.

At Freedom House’s annual Freedom Awards in May 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We’re also concerned by reports of the spread of mass DNA collection to Tibet as an additional form of control and surveillance over the Tibetan population.”

Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya, who serves as the US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, said in 2022 that she was “[d]eeply disturbed” by the reports of mass DNA collection in Tibet.

“We call on the [People’s Republic of China] to stop these repressive policies and respect the fundamental freedoms of Tibetans,” Zeya said on social media.

In October 2023, the bipartisan chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China wrote to Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, urging them to take action, including possibly imposing Global Magnitsky sanctions, over China’s mass biometric data collection in Tibet, as well as its separation of over 1 million Tibetan children from their families at state-run boarding schools.

Tibetan activism
Much of the credit for Thermo Fisher’s decision to stop selling DNA kits in the Tibet Autonomous Region goes to Tibetan activists, including those at Students for a Free Tibet, the International Tibet Network, Free Tibet and others.

Starting in late 2022, Tibet groups carried out global demonstrations at Thermo Fisher offices, including huge rallies in Boston during the company’s annual general meeting in May 2023.

These groups also worked with Thermo Fisher shareholders, building a coalition that helped lead to Thermo Fisher halting the DNA collection kit sales.

The International Campaign for Tibet joined to support these groups to address the mass DNA collection with US officials and to encourage them to take action.

During a March 2023 hearing on Capitol Hill about human rights in Tibet, ICT Chairman Richard Gere called for putting in place “concrete restrictions for technology transfer or other US company support for forced/coerced DNA or other medical data collection.”

ICT also sent a letter to House members in 2022 encouraging them to support Tibet-related portions of the America Competes Act, which called for export controls of items used in human rights abuses involving DNA sequencing.

In addition, ICT researchers spoke with the Commerce Department’s foreign policy division of the Office of Nonproliferation and Treaty Compliance, Bureau of Industry and Security, to inform them about the mass DNA collection program in Tibet, including the companies and Chinese officials involved.

Manjushri, a Dharamshala based organization dedicated to promoting Tibetan children’s literature and education, unveiled new books that included five Tibetan folktale books, a Tibetan jigsaw puzzle, and an activity book on Tuesday.

Jamyang Gyaltsen, the executive director of Manjushree, expressed pride in the organization’s achievements, highlighting that they have successfully published 81 titles of Tibetan children’s books since its inception. These publications have reached a wide audience, with over 70,000 copies distributed, nearly half of them are provided free of charge to ensure accessibility.

Director of Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Geshe Lhakdor, who attended the event as the chief guest, highlighted critical aspects of Tibetan education system in exile. While emphasizing the significance of instilling Tibetan education in children, he expressed concern over the increasing trend of migration of Tibetan youth to the West, which poses a threat to Tibetan language and culture. He stressed the pivotal role of parents in supplementing classroom learning and urged them to prioritize Tibetan language in their households.

Acknowledging the collaborative efforts of the Department of Education (DoE) and various organizations supporting projects of Manjushree, Geshe Lhakdor praised their joint endeavours. He cautioned against the notion of singular superiority in organizational efforts, emphasizing the necessity of collective action. Stressing the shared goal of providing quality education to Tibetan children, he advocated for further collaboration among stakeholders.

Geshe Lhakdor also emphasized the holistic development of children through education, beyond mere literacy and language. He articulated that comprehensive child development involves more than just teaching reading and writing, instead necessitates a focus on broader aspects of a child’s growth and learning.

He also shed light on the issue of a tribal mentality prevailing within the Tibetan community. He highlighted the detrimental effects of engaging in divisive politics and fostering internal conflicts, labelling these actions as indicative of a “tribal mentality.” Moreover, he emphasized that this isn’t unique to the Tibetan community but is witnessed across various societies. Describing this mentality as incompatible with democratic principles, he stressed the need for education to counteract such divisive tendencies.