Controversy
See also: Tibetan sovereignty debateIn 1989, Robert Badinter, a high-profile French criminal lawyer, participated in an episode of Apostrophes, a well-known French television program devoted to human rights, in the presence of the 14th Dalaï Lama. Talking about the disappearance of the Tibetan culture in Tibet, Robert Badinter used the term "cultural genocide". Subsequently, for the first time in 1993, the Dalaï Lama used the same term to describe the destruction of the Tibetan culture. More recently, at the time of 2008 Tibetan unrest, he accused the Chinese of Cultural genocide in their crackdown.
In 2008, Professor Robert Barnett, director of the Program for Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, stated that it was time for accusations of cultural genocide to be dropped: "I think we have to get over any suggestion that the Chinese are ill-intentioned or trying to wipe out Tibet." He also voiced his doubts in a book review he published in the New York Review of Books:"Why, if Tibetan culture within Tibet is being 'fast erased from existence', so many Tibetans within Tibet still appear to have a more vigorous cultural life, with over a hundred literary magazines in Tibetan, than their exile counterparts?"
Read more about this topic: Sinicization Of Tibet
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