Dharamshala — Chinese government is doing everything in its power to eliminate Tibetan identity, religion and culture through repressive policies. It has banned Tibetan children from learning their language, visiting monasteries or becoming monks, and prohibited the construction of new monasteries. It is enforcing new policies and prohibiting the display of Tibetan thangkas and the wearing of Tibetan hats. This is the latest policy implemented by the CCP.
According to reliable sources, Chinese authorities and police have banned Tibetans from displaying Tibetan thangkas in the town of Chabcha (Tib: ཆབ་ཆ), in Gonghe County (Tib:གསེར་ཆེན་རྫོང་), Tsongon (Ch: Qinghai), northeast Tibet, in February 2026, on the occasion of the Tibetan New Year (Losar).
Chinese police visited shops and homes to order them not to hang thangkas. Tibetan thangkas are intricate traditional paintings on cotton or silk, usually depicting Buddhist deities and mandalas. These sacred scrolls are used as aids for meditation, teaching and religious ceremonies, and serve as personal spiritual tools for practitioners. However, the Chinese authorities do not allow Tibetans to hang them in shops and homes because they are related to religion. This is a completely illegal act that violates fundamental human rights and freedom of religion.
The Chinese authorities have banned photos, books and teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as those of Kirti Rinpoche. Recently, the Chinese authorities have implemented new policies and banned the display of Tibetan thangkas in shops and homes. This is the latest repressive measure implemented by the CCP.
The Chinese authorities banned Tibetans from wearing traditional Tibetan hats in Xunhua County, Tsongon (Ch: Qinghai), in north-eastern Tibet, effective January 2026. This is the latest absurd measure taken by the Chinese Communist Party against Tibetans, aimed at making them physically similar to the Chinese.
The CCP has already begun creating a new Tibetan generation that resembles the Chinese by teaching Chinese language, Chinese culture, and the communist ideas of CCP leaders in colonial-style public boarding schools, where more than one million Tibetan children are separated from their parents, families, culture, and religion. Therefore, the Chinese Communist government aims to make all Tibetans think, speak, and look like Chinese and to eliminate Tibetan identity, which constitutes cultural genocide.
China-Tibet: The one-thing you need to know:
Over the past 70 decades, there has been ongoing political repression, social discrimination, economic marginalization, environmental destruction, and cultural assimilation, particularly due to Chinese migration to Tibet which is fueling intense resentment among the people of occupied Tibet.
The communist-totalitarian state of China began its invasion of Tibet in 1949, reaching complete occupation of the country in 1959. Since that time, more than 1.2 million people, 20% of the nation's population of six million, have died as a direct result of China's invasion and occupation. In addition, over 99% of Tibet's six thousand religious monasteries, temples, and shrines, have been looted or decimated resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sacred Buddhist scriptures.
Until 1949, Tibet was an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas which had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism. Religion was a unifying theme among the Tibetans -- as was their own language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh conditions, in a balance with their environment.
