November 26, 2011


Conditions for Tibetan in Nepal continue to deteriorate amidst growing Chinese pressureNepal police forcibly returned a young Tibetan man who was escaping from Tibet to the Chinese authorities in September, according to information that reached ICT on November 23. According to the same Tibetan sources, the Tibetan - whose full name is known to ICT - is now in detention in Tibet. It is the first known case of the refoulement of a Tibetan from the border areas of Nepal since June 2010.
The return of the Tibetan, Tashi, was in contravention of established protocol between the government of Nepal and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) that provides for the safe transit of Tibetan refugees through Nepalese territory and onward to India. These measures were put into practice after 1989 when Nepal stopped providing refugee status to new arrivals from Tibet. The 20-year old Tibetan who was sent back to Tibet is from a nomadic family in rural Biru County, Nagchu (Chinese: Naqu) Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. He was traveling into exile in mid-September with a group of five other Tibetans from his village of around the same age, two of whom were interviewed by ICT after they arrived safely in India some weeks later.

The six young men each paid 6000 yuan (approximately US $943) for a guide to take them from Lhasa to the Nepal border. After the group arrived on the Nepal side of the border in mid-September they stayed the night with a local family. The next day, three members of the group left with the guide to travel to Kathmandu, but were detained by Nepalese police on around September 11-13. Also detained were a group of 20 other Tibetans in the border area; all 23 were handed over to Nepal's Department of Immigration in Kathmandu. These 23 Tibetans were held in custody for at least 12 days before being handed over to the UNHCR, despite pressure from the Chinese embassy to return them to the PRC.
In the meantime, Tashi and two of his friends set out on a separate journey to Kathmandu on two motorbikes. But along the route to Kathmandu, two of the Tibetans were stopped by Nepalese police at a road checkpoint and detained in a police vehicle. They did not see what happened to Tashi, but said that the last time they saw him he was en route to Kathmandu by motorbike with a guide. They later learnt that he had been apprehended by police too and had not reached Kathmandu.
One of the Tibetans told ICT: "I was not afraid but very confused, because we didn't know where the Nepalese police will take us and what they would do with us. The police drove back for quite a long time in the dark and the road was very bumpy. After a while we saw many lights through the trees. There were around four armed police in the back of the jeep with us. Suddenly, the in-charge of the police yelled at us to jump and we jumped out of the jeep and ran up into the forest on the mountainside. We never stopped to rest until we reached the top; it was past midnight already. Our clothes were completely wet. We tried to spend the rest of the night at the top of the mountain, and next morning we saw that there was a family house and we went there to ask for something to eat and hot water to drink. Fortunately, the family gave us space to rest as well as food and drink. Then we asked them where we were and how far it was to Kathmandu from there. The mother told us that it will take more than two days to walk to Kathmandu, more than 150 kilometers."

The two Tibetans reached Kathmandu on September 24, after their departure from Tibet on August 28. It was only after reaching the Tibetan Refugee Transit Center in Kathmandu that they learned that their friend Tashi had been been detained by Nepalese police after crossing the border and handed over to their Chinese counterparts on the Tibet side. According to several sources connected to the incident, Tashi is now being held in detention in Lhasa.
Although Nepal is not a signatory to international refugee conventions, the forcible return or refoulement of refugees to a place where their lives or freedoms could be threatened violates a fundamental norm of international law. However, there is no recourse for refoulement and Tibetans that are forcibly returned face torture and harsh prison conditions. That details of Tashi's refoulement are only now coming to light, nearly three months later, speaks to the increased difficulty in ascertaining information on refoulements and possible refoulements.

The last known refoulement from Nepal occurred in June, 2010, when two Tibetan monks, 20-year old Dawa and 21-year old Dorjee, and a 22-year old woman called Penpa, were detained by Nepalese police in Nepal's Humla district bordering Purang (Chinese: Burang) county in Ngari prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. The three Tibetans were held at the police post in the village of Muchu, about a day's walk from the Tibet-Nepal border. According to ICT sources, Chinese border police were in touch with the Nepalese police, and the three Tibetans were taken by helicopter to the border at Hilsa, accompanied by a Nepalese politician and a policeman. Chinese security personnel collected them there and took them back into Tibet. According to the same sources, two of the Tibetans, one of the monks and the young woman, were jailed and would serve around six months. The second monk was allowed to return to his monastery.
Tashi's two Tibetan friends who are now safely in India said that they and his family are now very worried about his safety and welfare. Tibetans who have been caught escaping from Tibet are known to have undergone torture and hard labor while in custody. One of his friends said: "Since our arrival [in exile] we have learned many stories about the new arrivals being handed back to Chinese border security after being arrested in Nepal. Very sad stories." They also described their own feelings on being in India, saying: "We already had an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and it was very great and we had that kind of feeling we are not be able express in words. Now we are dreaming and excited to join the Tibetan Transit School in Dharamsala. And also we are very keen to learn Tibetan and English. We don't have a specific dream for the future, but we definitely want to be real Tibetans."

Tashi's two Tibetan friends said that Tashi had similar reasons for leaving Tibet to theirs - a desire to see the Dalai Lama, to have a good education, and to escape from the strictures of the Chinese authorities' policies in rural areas, affecting their livelihoods. One of them told ICT: "My family had 80 yaks, 200 sheep and five horses before, and I was grazing them together with other people in the village. Before 2005, our land was not divided or fenced at all, but since 2005, the local government set up fences and divided the land according to the number of family members. Now we cannot graze livestock freely as before, because, you can only graze on your own land, and it is not really necessary to watch the livestock as closely as before. But the problem that so many families face is shortage of grazing, and the only option is to reduce the number of your livestock or rent the land of other families who have few livestock. Most people choose the first option. Now my family has 60 Yaks, 120 sheep and 4 horses."
Tashi's other Tibetan friend said: "We grew up together and were always together with the livestock on the mountains back in Tibet, so we had plenty time to discuss going to India so on. Particularly, we spoke many times about His Holiness, and the massive protest in 2008 in Tibet. We heard from elderly people in the village that His Holiness is in India plus we had much more information about the Tibet issue since 2008. We used to listen to Radio Free Asia on the mountains with our livestock sometimes. Finally, we made the decision to leave Tibet and go to India, since then, I became more interested in education than before."

As Nepal-China relations develop, Tibetan refugees in Nepal face increasing dangers both on the journey into exile and within the long-standing Tibetan community in Kathmandu. In one recent incident on October 17, four Tibetan community leaders were detained by Nepalese police following a speech by China's Ambassador to Nepal Yang Houlan on October 16, in which he blamed "international and domestic forces" for "coordinating [anti-China] activities in Nepal".
The refoulement comes at a time when Nepal's treatment of Tibetan refugees are coming under greater scrutiny by the United States government. Two U.S. Congressmen visited Kathmandu in late September and October with the situation facing Tibetan refugees on their agenda. On November 20, U.S. Ambassador Scott DeLisi authored an article in the Kathmandu Post urging the government to continue to protect Tibetan refugees. The opinion piece came days before Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha visited Lhasa, Tibet, where he reportedly thanked the Government of China for its support and pledged to not allow any "anti-Chinese activities" on Nepali soil.
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