Racism & Discrimination

Discrimination occurs when people are denied equal rights, opportunities or treatment because of their ethnicity, language, religion or cultural identity. In Tibet, state policies impose disproportionate restrictions on Tibetans and subordinate Tibetan language, religion and culture to Chinese political and cultural norms.
 
These policies specifically target institutions, including monasteries and Tibetan language private schools, and practices through which Tibetans maintain a distinct collective identity.

No, Tibetans do not have freedom of movement and face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement, both within Tibet, China and across China’s borders. Access to passports has been systematically restricted for Tibetans, making international travel extraordinarily difficult for many.
 
Movement within Tibetan areas is also subject to extensive security controls. Checkpoints, police presence, surveillance systems, and restrictions around politically sensitive locations allow authorities to monitor where Tibetans travel and with whom they associate. These controls intensify during religious anniversaries, political events, and other periods deemed “sensitive periods” by the Chinese government.

ICT Chinese authorities have built an extensive surveillance system across Tibet that combines physical policing with biometric and digital monitoring. The CCP profiles Tibetans using an invasive, bio-digital surveillance architecture that treats their entire ethnic and religious identity as a potential state security threat. Facial recognition, video surveillance, police databases, and monitoring of phones and online communications further expand the state’s ability to identify and track individuals. These technologies operate alongside neighborhood “grid management,” village-level policing, household monitoring, and systems that encourage residents to report activities considered politically suspicious. Tibetans may face particular scrutiny for religious activity, contact with relatives abroad, possession of prohibited material, or expressions of support for Tibetan identity and culture.
 
This comprehensive web ensures that a Tibetan’s biology, movements, relationships, and communications are permanently tracked and profiled by the state.

Chinese government policy is rapidly reducing the space for Tibetan-language education and accelerating the use of Mandarin as the dominant language of instruction. China’s new so-called “Ethnic Unity and Progress Law,” which took effect on July 1, 2026, further institutionalizes assimilationist policies; ICT’s analysis finds that it formalizes the transition from Tibetan-medium education toward a model in which Chinese is the principal language of instruction. Independent and private Tibetan-language schools have also faced increasing restrictions and closure.
 
Tibetan children are separated from their families and communities and placed in the state-run residential school system, where UN experts have warned that predominantly Mandarin education is weakening children’s ability to communicate in Tibetan with their families. Language carries Tibet’s literature, history, religious scholarship, and cultural memory; its erosion threatens the transmission of Tibetan identity from one generation to the next.

The forced resettlement of Tibetan nomads has catastrophic implications, destroying Tibet’s traditional economy, dismantling a multi-millennial cultural identity, and permanently scarring the alpine environment.
 
Under the CCP’s sweeping relocation policies, roughly three million Tibetan nomads have been systematically cleared off their ancestral lands. This state-engineered demographic shift has profound, cascading impacts across three major areas: social and economic marginalization, the collapse of indigenous cultural identity, accelerated environmental degradation.
 
Human rights organizations have documented coercive measures used to secure participation in whole-village relocations. Although Chinese authorities justify many relocations as environmentally necessary, ICT and researchers have challenged policies that exclude Tibetan pastoralists and disregard their longstanding role in managing the Tibetan grasslands.