Gallagher Issues Statement on 65th Anniversary of National Tibetan Uprising Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released the below statement on the 65th anniversary of National Tibetan Uprising Day.

"Sixty-five years ago today, the Tibetan people rose up against the Chinese military occupation of Tibet. The crackdown that followed forced the Dalai Lama into exile in India and imprisoned, tortured, and killed thousands of Tibetans. The CCP has continued to brutally persecute the Tibetan people ever since.

Today, for example, over a million Tibetan children, some as young as three, have been forced into colonial boarding schools where their culture, language, and religion is stripped away from them. The population at large is tightly controlled and subjected to constant surveillance, increasingly enhanced by forced DNA collection.

Religious belief is also under attack. 6,000 monasteries have been destroyed and reincarnation without the party's consent has been outlawed. Xi Jinping is even claiming the right to select the next Dalai Lama.

In the face of this brutal repression and overwhelming campaign to wipe Tibet, body and soul, from the map—the Tibetan people fight on, the very embodiment of resilience. Only last month, more than a thousand Tibetans were arrested after they bravely protested an infrastructure project that would have destroyed yet another monastery and displaced local villages.

The United States stands in solidarity with the people of Tibet and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, whose struggle for freedom is an inspiration to the entire world."