At 8 am on 19 October, thousands of Tibetan students in Rebkong, northeastern Tibet, took to the streets to demand 'freedom of language.' They were protesting the decision taken during a meeting on 12 October by the Provincial Communist Party and Amdo (Qinghai) provincial government to replace Tibetan with Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction at educational institutions.
Peaceful protests by Tibetan students have, meanwhile, spread all over Tibet and Beijing, where 400 students from the Minorities University participated in a solidarity march. On 21 October, more than 3000 students in Golok, eastern Tibet, also protested against the new language policy. Tibetan students in exile and their supporters are also lobbying initiatives around the world, particularly in Belgium, Holland, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and in many places in the US and India. Students and teachers in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) have shown strong support for the Tibetan students. These moves, however, have not been taken well by the powers-that-be. At around 10:30 on the morning of 22 October, Chinese authorities detained more than 20 students in Chabcha in Amdo, northeastern Tibet.
The intent behind this seemingly apolitical policy of the Chinese authorities is summed up in a letter that was signed by at least 133 teachers from various schools in the region, and submitted on 15 October to the Amdo (Qinghai) provincial government. 'If both the spoken and written language of a people die, then it is as if the entire population of that people has died and the people have been decimated,' the teachers maintained. An appeal signed by 27 Tibetan writers living in exile also clearly express this concern: 'As Tibetan writers, we consider language as the core identity of the Tibetan people. The survival of our identity depends on our language and to destroy a language is to destroy people and their identity.'
Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Communist Party's outlook towards Tibetan language and religion has been one of suspicion and fear. The Tibetan people's traditional way of life and outlook towards the world is inextricably linked with Buddhism, which in turn is firmly linked with Tibetan language. (The entire corpus of Buddhist cannons and thousands of commentaries by Buddhist scholars down the centuries are available only in Tibetan language.) This shared culture binds Tibetans into a unified entity giving them a sense of national identity. This unifying power, however, is seen as a threat to Beijing's rule and its survival in Tibet. Consequently, for over half a century, the Chinese rulers have hammered down on Tibetan religion, language and identity. The Communist Party of China has even involved itself in controlling and manipulating the selection of reincarnations of Tibetan lamas – the spiritual teachers and leaders of Tibetan Buddhism.