Two days before the 51st anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa, Nepali police were ordered to arrest Thinley Gyatso, the representative of the Dalai Lama in Nepal. This is a preemptive strike against the anti-China demonstrations expected to take place on Wednesday March 10.
On March 1959, Tibetans rose up in arms against the Chinese annexation of their kingdom, but the resistance ended in a bloodbath by the People’s Liberation Army. The suppression of the uprising led to the Dalai Lama’s flight to India and a prolonged resistance against the Chinese communists, conducted by Tibetan freedom fighters, who received arms and training from the CIA. The freedom fighters operated from Mustang, one of Nepal’s northernmost districts that jut out into the Tibetan Plain. The resistance ended in 1974.
Since then, under Chinese pressure, a succession of Nepal governments – from the monarchy, to the Maoists, to the current government – have clamped down on the Tibetan Diaspora in Nepal, particularly after the headline-making protests that led up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In recent weeks there have been numerous signs that China’s nervousness over the March 10 anniversary has only increased – particularly since President Obama’s recent meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington. China has retaliated in Nepal by pressuring the Nepal President, Foreign Minister and other ministers into staying away from the March 10 celebrations at a Kathmandu monastery.
More important, since February, Nepal police have arrested nearly three-dozen Tibetan refugees trying to escape to India through Dolakha, a Nepali district bordering the Tibetan border. This was followed by an unprecedented move. The military attaché at China’s embassy in Kathmandu, General Chen Chong, personally flew to Dolakha on February 28 to meet with the chief district police officer and other Nepali border officials. It has been reported that he lectured the officials, saying, “Tibetans who flee to India via Nepal are trained to carry out terrorist activities by their religious leader Dalai Lama.”
So much for China’s claim that they do not intrude into Nepal’s internal affairs.
It is expected that a rounding up of more leaders of the Tibetan refugee
community in Nepal will follow.
Note: Sources for this posting are Nepalnews.com, the
Hindustan Times and Times of India.
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