Tibet in Context is a podcast series that gears in gaining a deeper understanding of Tibet through conversations with Tibetans, China Watchers, Tibetologists, Environmentalist and Security Experts.

A conversation with Professor Gyal Lo la.

Tibetan scholar Professor Gyal Lo is a remarkable witness to China's accelerated assimilationist policies, aimed at the extinction of a separate Tibetan identity and sense of history.

In this podcast, he reflects on why he had to defect from the PRC in 2020, his fears for the future and the immense emotional impact of his meeting with the Dalai Lama. In this conversation with FNVA, Professor Gyal Lo speaks to FNVA about the importance of India to the survival of Tibetan Buddhist culture, and warns India to watch what China does, not what it says. He gives personal testimony of the impacts of China's colonial boarding school system on the lives of children in his own family, and the struggles of Tibetan intellectuals to maintain their language and spirit.

Born in Amdo, eastern Tibet, Dr Gyal Lo obtained his master's degree from the Tibetan Language and Culture Department at the Northwestern University for Nationalities in Lanzhou. He became an assistant professor in the same department, where he taught for the next decade, undertaking intensive research into education in Tibet. After leaving home to obtain his PhD from the University of Toronto, Dr Lo returned home, and was troubled to find evidence in his own family of detrimental impacts of China's kindergarten and boarding school education on Tibetan children. For the next five years he visited over 50 of these boarding schools and documented their impacts on children and the community.

He obtained a professorship at Yunnan Normal University in 2017, but in a worsening political climate, his position was terminated, and he was compelled to leave the PRC in December 2020. After resettling in Canada, where he now lives, Dr Lo decided to speak out about his experiences and his fears for the future survival of Tibetan language, culture and religion. He has testified in numerous international fora with his extensive knowledge of China's colonial boarding schools in Tibet, including in the UK Parliament, UN committees and in February 2023 at Canada's House of Commons' Subcommittee on International Human Rights.