George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality in Tibet as the Chinese government aims to eradicate culture's identity through processes reminiscent of Australia's stolen generation, Tibet's leader-in-exile says.
Tibet's exiled president Penpa Tsering said the situation in the region has deteriorated to a point comparable to South Sudan and Syria, accusing the Chinese regime of "striking the very identity of Tibetan people" in a bid to erase the culture.
"If anyone has read George Orwell's 1984, that has come into reality in China and more so in the Tibetan region," Mr Tsering told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
He told of the dire conditions living as a Tibetan under Chinese rule where the flow of information and free movement has been limited, with constant surveillance by authorities.
"That's what China tries to do - lock away Tibet. Make it like a huge prison where nobody can go in, nobody can go out and then tell the international community that Tibet is a socialist paradise," he said.
The regime has cracked down on all points of Tibetan culture with restrictions extending to its main religion of Buddhism where CCTV has been placed in all monasteries to surveil the movements of monks and nuns.
Tibetans living in the region have had artificial intelligence deployed to control them including electronic identification, geolocation or the collection of DNA for profiling.
"This is aimed at complete eradication of the identity of the nationalities so that everything becomes Chinese," the president said.
Details of Tibetan children being removed from families and put into "colonial-style" boarding schools hark back to Australia's own stolen generation.
When pointed out to Chinese officials, Mr Tsering said they deflected to the past wrongs of other countries including the US and Australia.
"China knows these governments have done wrong ... The Chinese government is knowingly, deliberately, doing this to the Tibetans."
And with news that China plans to close down Tibetan classes in the Golong region from 2024 and potentially expanding that to the entire region, Mr Tsering says there will be serious consequences on Tibetans being able to maintain their identity.
"When the whole world is moving towards multiculturalism, China wants to move towards one culture, one nation, one language, so they impose the use of Mandarin."
Mr Tsering called on the Albanese government to be consistent with its laws and impose Magnitsky-style sanctions on those responsible for the human rights abuses.
"The Australian government has sanctioned Iran, Burma, Russia but when it comes to China, then everybody closes down a little bit," the president said.
"If it is a foreign policy, then it has to be equal for everybody."
However, the leader-in-exile isn't asking to completely break from China, instead advocating for the "Middle Way approach" initiated by the Dalai Lama, where Tibetans would live with more autonomy but still under China's government.
"We are not asking for independence," he said.
"It's not a matter of who rules. It is the quality of the rule."
Australian Associated Press
