Kate Saunders
The Sunday Guardian
February 17, 2013
Kathmandu has been a dangerous place for the Tibetan community in recent weeks, as the Nepalese government rolled out the red carpet for one of China’s top leaders, Zhou Yongkang, who led the highest-level Chinese delegation to visit Nepal for some years.
In the area of the holy Boudha stupa — encircled by Tibetan shops selling prayer wheels, incense, and thronged by tourists and pilgrims — the atmosphere was tense. Tibetans were anxious and frightened, and at night few could be seen under the unwinking gaze of the Buddha’s eyes on the white stupa. Before the arrival of Zhou, who oversees “social stability” in the CCP’s nine-person Politburo, senior Tibetans in the community were intimidated and warned not to hold any vigils or “anti-China activity,” eight Tibetans were arrested, seemingly at random, and others went into hiding.
It was the latest demonstration of the level of Beijing’s influence on the Nepalese government. The Chinese authorities have taken advantage of political instability, the rise of the Maoists, and the need for resources to develop Nepal’s infrastructure to gain an unprecedented leverage over Kathmandu’s treatment of its long-standing Tibetan community. Beijing’s influence over the Nepalese government, border forces, the judicial system and civil society at a time of political transition in Nepal signify that Tibetans in Nepal are increasingly vulnerable, demoralised and at risk of arrest and repatriation. Last year, Tibetan refugees, mainly women and including two sick children, had to hide in a forest in Nepal while Chinese armed police searched for them — after Nepalese police had started to transport them back to the Tibet-Nepal border. Tibetans in Nepal — the world’s second largest Tibetan community in exile after India — are experiencing harassment and extortion, more restrictions on their movements and greater difficulty securing education and jobs than ever before.
In one well-known incident in 2003, 18 Tibetans under UNHCR protection were taken from prison in Kathmandu by the Chinese embassy and driven to the border and into Tibet. Some months later, I met one of the young Tibetans among this group in a transit centre providing temporary shelter and food for Tibetans who arrive in exile. Among the mattresses on the floor and the sole possessions of the refugees in paper bags and plastic suitcases somehow carried across the most forbidding mountain ranges in the world, a young Tibetan boy was curled up in a corner, studying English letters in a notebook. Eighteen-year-old Gyaltsen told us that right after they were taken across the border, he and the rest of the group were manacled and driven to prison. He was beaten and tortured, and forced to carry out hard labour. After he was released, he risked further imprisonment by making the long journey into exile via Nepal again — determined to join his parents, who had arrived safely in India.
Despite his bleak surroundings, Gyaltsen looked immaculate in a smart, buttoned-up grey waistcoat and pressed trousers. I wrote what he said in my notebook: “Living in Tibet is like being in a very dark room, with just a glimmering of light that is the possibility of escape to India. I had to walk towards that light.”
Nepal is an essential gateway for Tibetans to escape from persecution into exile. Since a violent crackdown was imposed in Tibet from March, 2008 onwards, the number of Tibetan refugees reaching Nepal has decreased dramatically from around 2,500-3,500 a year to less than a thousand a year. Now, they are not only in danger on the Chinese side of the border, but also face new risks to their safety on the Nepalese side — despite an existing agreement with the UNHCR that should guarantee their transit to India.
Increasingly, there are indications that many of those in Nepal’s professional elite are concerned about China’s assertive actions in Nepal’s sovereign territory, recognising that acquiescence to Chinese demands directly threatens the integrity of Nepalese processes and institutions. Within Nepalese civil society, there are some moves to create legislation on the issue of status of Tibetans in Nepal and refugee rights.
Nepalese human rights monitors who are supportive of the Tibetans’ plight point out that their government’s actions run counter to close cultural and religious ties between the Nepalese and Tibetans dating back to the 6th century. Himalayan Sherpa, Tamang, Dolpo, Mustang and other Himalayan people share the same devotion to the Dalai Lama and practise Tibetan Buddhism. For centuries, Nepali traders supplied Tibet with goods from India and maintained a strong mercantile presence in Lhasa and other towns on the high plateau. The Boudhanath Stupa is on the ancient trade route from Tibet, and Tibetan merchants have offered prayers here for many centuries. Tibetans brought the wealth and art of a once-thriving carpet industry to Nepal, and their presence and religious culture has contributed immeasurably to tourism in Nepal.
The Tibetan community has always been respected among ordinary Nepalese, their religious culture interwoven into the fabric of Nepalese life, which only makes their current insecurity at the behest of Beijing more disturbing to witness. The legitimacy of this community and its historic connections must be reinstated in Nepal, for the Nepalese people as much as for Tibetans.
While Zhou Yongkang was in Nepal, gaining commitments from the Nepalese side that there would be no “anti-China activity” on their soil, in eastern Tibet, a young Tibet monk drank petrol and set fire to himself. Before he died, Tsewang Norbu called fro freedom and for the Dalai Lama to be allowed to come home. Tibetans in Nepal were not even allowed to hold a candlelight vigil to express their anguish at his sacrifice, born from repression in their homeland.
Kate Saunders is the Communications Director of International Campaign for Tibet.
