Student Detained for Speaking Out about Declining Job Opportunities for Tibetans

By Tsering Wangdue / April 25, 2019;

File photo of a Tibetan school in Lhasa

A Tibetan student named Sonam has been arrested after writing an essay criticising the declining number of government job opportunities for Tibetans living in Tibetan regions.

Sonam wrote the essay for his civil service examination. He was a master’s degree candidate at Northwest Minzu University in Gansu province’s Lanzhou city before being driven out of the classroom earlier this month by officials from the Tibet Education Bureau in China. In his essay, Sonam wrote about the annually decreasing number of opportunities available for Tibetans wishing to take the Chinese national civil service exams. His essay was written in the Chinese language and has been widely shared on popular Chinese social media platforms Weibo and Wechat.

Although local government officials in the area claim there is an increase in employment opportunities, only 210 Tibetan graduates were selected from the 70,000 candidates who sat the civil service this year. Increasing numbers of Chinese graduates coming into Tibet every year, together with the requirement of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese, have contributed to the failure of Tibetans to gain a hold in this competitive job market.

“Many Tibetan university graduates say it is increasingly difficult to find jobs in Tibet, and many of those who graduated in 2018 are still left without jobs,” reports Radio Free Asia, quoting one of their sources.

Refuting Sonam’s criticism, China’s state run Xinhua News published an article on April 16; Across China: Favorable ethnic policies bring benefits for Tibetan children. The article profiles a young Tibetan couple working in Beijing, earning a handsome monthly salary and with a high standard of living. The article states that there are many Tibetans who have been benefited from the favourable ethnic policies which enable them to study in better schools and even have the opportunity to go abroad for further studies.

Despite China’s constitution providing for equal rights and opportunities for ethnic minorities, many Tibetans find they are not able to find a job, either in private companies or in international corporations, including multinational companies. Tibetans have to compete against the increasing Han Chinese population migrating into Tibet and taking government civil service jobs; the selection criteria and process work in favour of Han Chinese applicants.